Dame Deborah James wins posthumous award for hit podcast as co-host pays touching tribute
DAME Deborah James has won a posthumous award for her hit podcast – as her co-host paid a touching tribute.
Dame Deborah hosted You, Me and the Big C alongside Rachael Bland and Lauren Mahon from its inception in 2018 until a few weeks before her death last month after a battle with bowel cancer.
On Saturday, the show’s remaining presenter – Lauren – accepted the Podcast Champion award on behalf of her departed colleagues and the rest of the team at the British Podcast Awards.
Lauren said: “Me and Deb had a little joke when Rachael died that I couldn’t just do the podcast by myself because I couldn’t call it ‘Me, Me and the Big C’.
“The podcast is our happy place. It’s a bit surreal to be standing here without both my girls.
“We knew this was a risk, that some of us would die when we started it, but we wanted to continue to champion it.”
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She continued: “There is more work to be done. I don’t know what it looks like, but the podcast has always been a service.
“Last time we won at these awards, we dedicated the award to Rachael. I’m so proud to say that this is for Dame Deborah F***ing James!”
Rachael passed away in September 2018 after battling breast cancer, and her widower Steve has occasionally co-hosted with Rachael and Deborah.
The award comes days after Deborah’s funeral took place on Wednesday, with her husband Sebastien and their children Hugo and Eloise leading the procession.
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Hugo, 14, also helped to carry his mother’s wicker coffin, which was adorned with stunning white roses named in Sun writer Debs’s honour.
For each Dame Deborah James rose sold, £2.50 is donated to the BowelBabe fund — which today had raised £7.4million for cancer charities in her memory.
In her final days, Debs raised millions for the newly- launched fund which Cancer Research UK will help allocate to causes she cared about most.
Meanwhile Lorraine Kelly revealed the funeral was “full of laughs and tears”.
The 62-year-old said: “There were a lot of tears and there really was genuinely a lot of laughs too as well as we remembered her, so it was great.
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“She planned it all and it was perfection, as you would expect.
“I was honoured to be there with some of our team.
“It was a beautiful, beautiful send off. It was so lovely. It was sad, but it was also a celebration of an amazing, amazing woman.”
