This week’s Radio Times cover features the late Dame Deborah James

Friends of the late cancer campaigner and fundraiser recall a vivacious one-off who was a force of nature ahead of new BBC documentary Deborah James: Bowelbabe in Her Own Words.

Deborah James in Bowelbabe: In Her Own Words

BBC/Zinc Media/Sophie Mayanne

Published: Tuesday, 11 April 2023 at 2:04 pm

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Like thousands of others in the UK, Dame Deborah James had to live with the fear and uncertainty of cancer. In her case it was stage three bowel cancer, a form of the disease that's much less publicised. Cancer isn't something people like to talk about. Bowel cancer even less so.

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Deborah died last summer aged 40, five years after her diagnosis. But in the intervening time her mission to raise awareness of the disease saw her start a taboo-breaking BBC podcast – You, Me and the Big C – that became the launchpad for her Bowelbabe campaign that, as of today, has raised more than £11 million for research into the disease.

What was it that made this deputy headteacher and mum of two such an inspiration? This week, BBC Two revisits her life and examines the impact she had in a powerful and poignant documentary – Deborah James: Bowelbabe in Her Own Words.

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In the new issue of Radio Times magazine, we talk to her Big C co-host Lauren Mahon, Radio 5 Live presenter Tony Livesey, and her friend and fellow cancer sufferer Emma Campbell.

All of them point to her frank approach. She was determined to draw attention to her cancer, to campaign for people to be aware of the symptoms and to raise money for research into a cure. But she also refused to be defined by it. As Emma tells us: "She showed me that, among the fear and darkness, there is room for joy."

That defiance is evident in so much of what Deborah did. It drew the admiration of many, including Prince William, who conferred on her a damehood in her parents' garden a few days before she died. The photographs of that occasion show her pride, mixed with an inevitable sadness.

The images she routinely shared on her social media – such as the one on our cover – did the same. But they also capture something else. The joy she found in living. It may have been too short, but hers was a life well lived.

Dame Deborah James Radio Times cover

Also in this week's Radio Times:

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Bowelbabe: In Her Own Words airs at 9pm on BBC Two on Monday 17th April.

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Authors

Radio Times editor Shem Law wears a shirt, tie and grey jumper. He is sitting at a wooden desk behind a sign saying "Editor" clasping his hands. There are other items on the desk, including a dial telephone and typewriter.

Shem Law

Shem Law is the brand editor of Radio Times, and the 20th person to hold that esteemed position in over 100 years. He wasn't allowed a television growing up, but over the years he has rather overcompensated for that fact.

Tom Loxley

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