Podcaster Dame Deborah James left her family behind when she sadly died of cancer on Tuesday at the age of 40.
Married with two children, the podcast host had spent the final weeks of her life spending quality time with her family after announcing in May that the bowel cancer treatment she had been on was no longer working.
She shared snaps of her and husband Sebastien Bowen in the days before her passing as she was given end-of-life care at her parents’ home in Woking.
The family had been planning for life after her passing, with Deborah making memory boxes for her children to open during certain future milestones.
(Image: Instagram)
The broadcaster, as part of preparations for her death, had also even given her husband love advice if he looks for a new partner once he has grieved.
Who is Deborah James’ husband?
(Image: Dave Benett/Getty Images for JW Marriott Grosvenor House London)
The host of BBC podcaster You, Me and The Big C died only weeks before her 14th wedding anniversary to Sebastien Bowen.
According to LinkedIn, Sebastien is a banker who is a partner at Pomona Capital.
He was educated at the exclusive London private school St Paul’s and has a master’s degree from the University of Edinburgh.
Deborah called her husband her “rock” because of the support he gave her during her cancer journey, from when she was first diagnosed with stage four bowel cancer in 2016 and through the trauma of her surgeries for infections, bleeding and having 17 tumours removed.
The campaigner – who has raised £6.9million through her Bowelbabe fund for Cancer Research UK – had two children with Sebastien, Hugo, 14, and Eloise, 12.
Did Deborah James and her husband get divorced?
(Image: bowelbabe/Instagram)
The prolific fundraiser revealed in an interview that she and Sebastien, who married in July 2008, started divorce proceedings and even began dating other people only a year before her cancer diagnosis.
The Londoner told the Daily Mail in 2020 that the demands of being made a deputy head teacher who had been given the task of turning around a failing comprehensive in Surrey saw their “marriage come last” and set them on course for a split.
She said Sebastien moved out of the family home in 2015 and they started to see other people, with Deborah recalling how she went on some “hideous” Tinder dates.
A decree nisi had been issued – a document giving couples a six-week countdown until their official divorce – when they agreed to counselling in order to put themselves on better terms for the sake of bringing up their children separately.
The sessions led to the pair starting to firstly having drinks and then dinner together and, in November 2016, they decided to get back together, only for Deborah to be given her shock diagnosis soon after.
The advice for finding a new partner that Deborah gave her husband before she died
One of her final wishes was to make sure her husband knew he had her approval to find someone new once he had processed her death – with strict instructions that he does not marry a “bimbo”.
“I don’t think I have ever seen my husband so emotional, but now he has suddenly realised the enormity of this,” Deborah said in an interview with The Times.
“I have given him strict instructions: I want him to move on.
“He’s a handsome man, I’m, like, ‘Don’t be taken for a ride, don’t marry a bimbo, find someone else who can make you laugh like we did’.”
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
