If you were told you had a short time left to live, how would you spend your remaining days? Dame Deborah James, the woman who campaigned tirelessly to raise awareness of bowel cancer until her death last year, decided that her priority was to tell everyone to examine their number twos. Under her bold moniker, BowelBabe, she started blogging about her journey online after she was diagnosed with incurable stage four bowel cancer in 2016, aged 35. She quickly became the voice of bowel cancer activism, known for her tagline “Check your poo”, and for her work as a co-host on the BBC podcast You, Me and the Big C.
James died aged 40 on 28 June 2022, after going into palliative end-of-life care at her parent’s home. She lived one year longer than the doctors initially predicted. And now, her five years of campaigning are documented in the shattering BBC Two film BowelBabe in Her Own Words.
