Dame Deborah James jokingly gave her husband Sebastien Bowen a list of women he wasn’t allowed to “hook up with” after her death.
Before she died last June, after six years of living with bowel cancer, James told Bowen she would “do my damned hardest to come and haunt him” if he began dating the women on the list once she was gone.
A new BBC documentary about the cancer campaigner’s life, titled Deborah James: Bowelbabe in Her Own Words, features her thoughts and opinions through voice notes, TikTok clips and clips from her You, Me and The Big C podcast.
James, who died at the age of 40, described her widower as a “very eligible bachelor” to whom she had already “told all my death confessions to”.
“I had a list of girls that I was like, right, they’re going to pounce on my husband,” she said in the documentary, which will be available on BBC iPlayer from Monday 17 April.
“And so I listed off a couple of names that I said I would do my damned hardest to come and haunt him if he hooked up with those people, which I thought was absolutely hilarious.”
On a more serious note, James added: “I want to have a bench where I live, because I don’t like the idea of ever being lonely in death. I like the idea of being somewhere where my kids can sit and contemplate and read a poem.”
James and Bowen, 44, share two children, Hugo, 15, and Eloise, 13. They were married from July 2008 until her death in June 2022.
In the documentary, she reflects on having to speak candidly to her children about her diagnosis.
“I’m probably an advocate of being very open with your children, but I have nightmares just re-enacting what I had to say to them,” she said.
James described her bowel cancer as “the glam cancer”, adding: “There’s nothing pink about my cancer, it’s just brown. I was diagnosed after six months of a change of bowel habits, basically where I was pooing blood.
“I’m going to be very frank, because I think one of the biggest problems is that people are not frank enough about the symptoms that led to their diagnosis, and then as a result it holds up their diagnosis.”
Before she died, James set up her Bowelbabe cancer research fund, which exceeded its initial target of £250,000 within 12 hours of launching it. Since then, it has raised £11.3m.
Her family has continued her activism in raising awareness about bowel cancer and encouraging people to check their poo.
Earlier this year, Bowen urged people to get involved in the NHS’s new free bowel cancer screening programme and said: “I know Deborah would be telling anyone that would listen: ‘Check your poo’.”
