Dame Deborah James's schoolgirl daughter says she is following in her campaigner mum's footsteps - and reveals valuable lessons Debs taught in her

Daily Mail​

22-04-2025

Dame Deborah James 's teenage daughter has revealed that she will take on her mother's fight against bowel cancer.
Eloise, 15, is set to step into the public eye and continue the campaigning her fun-loving mum was so well-known for.
The columnist - who was often seen dressed in a poo outfit - died from bowel cancer in 2022 at 40, five years after her stage four diagnosis.
Her young daughter will join ITV 's Lorraine Kelly today on her show for the No Butts initiative after it was launched by Dame Deborah in 2021.
Speaking to The Sun, Eloise said 'mum would be chuffed I was doing this because spreading awareness is what it's all about. Mum didn't want to make it something scary, she wanted to make it something fun'.
'She made it like dances, making jokes out of it. It gets to people more than being serious, 'cause no one is going to listen to someone being serious the whole time,' she continued, before adding that 'life is just not that serious, at the end of the day'.
Eloise has starred in a short film for the show alongside her grandmother, Heather, where they reflect on some of Dame James's work.
The GCSE student points out cheeky merchandise like branded lo roll and knickers before speaking about Prince William's visit to their family home.
The future king visited in May 2022 when he 'joined us for afternoon tea and champagne' and 'not only spent a generous amount of time talking to my whole family but also honoured me with my Damehood,' Dame James wrote on Instagram at the time.
She continued: 'It's quite surreal having a royal pop in at home, and yes you can imagine the cleaning antics and preparation went off the scale - but it was all irrelevant because William was so kind and he put us all at ease.
'He is clearly passionate about improving oncology outcomes as the President of the Royal Marsden.
'It was such a special day for my whole family, making memories to last a life time.'
She then joked that 'he's welcome back any time!'
True to her mother's humorous confession, Eloise remembered making meringues while her grandmother was frantically going around the house trying to tidy.
She said: 'The house was spotless but she was like, 'My house is a tip, I'm so sorry Prince William'. She spent 24 hours tidying, I don't know why she was apologising.'
Dame James also tried to speak to her children about the different types and shapes of poo - but her hilarious outfits were perhaps most memorable.
Bowel cancer kills more than 16,500 people every year, making it the second biggest cancer killer in the UK.
And while 43,000 people are diagnosed each year, the disease is treatable if caught early.
'What mum wanted was for everyone to know the truth, that it can happen to anybody. Even if you're the most healthy person in the room you've still have chance of getting it,' Eloise said.
Symptoms can include blood in your poo, extreme tiredness, lumps or pain in your tummy and unexplainable weight loss.
Dame James decided to document her journey with cancer online to raise awareness of the disease and the daily plight of people living with cancer.
She went on to host the successful 'You, Me and The Big C' podcast and used her platform to raise a massive £17 million for cancer research via the Bowelbabe fund.
In spring of 2022 she revealed she had entered palliative care and was going to move into her parents' home in Woking, Surrey, to spend her final days with her family around her.
Her mother said in January that Dame James would be 'up there grinning from ear to ear' after the NHS announced it would drop the bowel cancer screening age from 60.
Thanks to her campaigning, around 850,000 more people will now be included in the bowel cancer screening programme, with those aged 50 and 52 receiving kits by the end of March.
Earlier this month, her siblings, Ben James, and Sarah Wieczorek, revealed how they privately dealt with the grief of losing their sister to bowel cancer on The Life of Bryony podcast.
Sarah, her sister, told Mail columnist Bryony Gordon: 'It's horrible her kids have to grow up without a mum.
'I hope the fund can support groundbreaking research that will give people like her more time – people shouldn't be losing their mums, or daughters, sisters and friends.
'I don't let myself think about the fact she's not here. I don't want to go there… I miss her energy and the ability she had just to make things normal. Not just normal, but fun.
'The bit that has made it easier is that she made such a statement and we're lucky enough to still be talking about her.
'We get to do a lot of charitable events through her: her memory is very much still alive. It feels like she's still living, even though she's not.'
Sarah and Ben are running the London Marathon this year, to raise more money for cancer research in Dame James's memory.
On his grief, Ben said: 'Obviously, it's a crap situation that nobody wants to be in. But honestly, it's hard to look negatively across a lot of it.
'Those last six to eight weeks were such a huge distraction: Debs herself said that it was one the best times we've had as a family.
'I live close to where Debs lived and often run past the house and think, I can't believe she's not there – that hits hard.
'Going through cancer is a process and you grieve before it happens – to an extent. She was pretty ill at the end, and you see it is a release.
'We keep moving forward – I think everyone deals with it in their own way.'
In 2022, Eloise modelled a limited edition Christmas jumper to raise money for her mum's charity fund.
The white jumper read the words 'Rebellious Hope' with holly adorned to the lettering as part of their family's festive fundraising campaign for Cancer Research UK.
At the time, Deborah's 'Rebellious Hope' T-shirts raised more than £1.68million for the fund and her family said they hope the new jumpers can carry Deborah's 'light and magic'.
And last March, Heather heartbreakingly revealed that in one of the last conversations between Dame James and her children, Eloise and Hugo, she told them to 'live a life worth living'.