Heather James tells me the story of her visit to the Radio Times Covers Party last month. The event included a glorious tribute cover of her daughter Dame Deborah James, highlighting the documentary charting her life and death. She assumed that with all the Call The Midwife crew and cast of The Traitors in attendance “no one would know who we were”. But Mollie Pearce, runner-up in the latest series of The Traitors, came up and told her that Deborah was her hero. James says: “Mollie had a stoma bag fitted aged 18. She’s now 22. And Mollie told me: ‘It was the start of my life, not the end, because Deborah gave me the confidence to go out and embrace it, and talk about it’.”
Key takeaways
- Heather James lost her daughter Dame Deborah James to cancer in 2022
- Ever since, she has taken on Deborah’s legacy and worked to maintain awareness about the Bowelbabe fund
- Her generation were not educated about what she calls “self-spoiling”, and are now online, wanting to learn.
- This demographic should not be ignored for haircare and fashion content: 58% of her audience are 45+
It will be two years in June since Deborah James died of bowel cancer. In the final extraordinary weeks of her too-short life, she set up the Bowelbabe Fund, which has raised more than £12.6 million for Cancer Research UK. She also received a damehood and launched a clothing line with In The Style, all while receiving palliative care at her parents’ house in Surrey, and using Instagram to report from death’s frontline. Deborah’s journey touched so many people, moved so many: from the Mollies of this world; to the parents in Heather James’ direct messages (DMs) on Instagram talking about their children’s suffering and wondering how they are going to cope; to the people alive, diagnosed early because Deborah had somehow, somewhere reminded them to check their poo. This is why Heather James, aged 66, who only signed up to Instagram a few years ago, who only recently learned that Stories last for just 24 hours, has taken up her daughter’s social media baton and is becoming a creator in her own right. It’s a burden, probably, but a call she feels compelled to answer, despite panic attacks, in spite of her grief. She tells me: “Deborah was sent here for a purpose. She achieved it. And now I have to keep that legacy open, because she worked so hard for it. I have to keep that awareness out there.”
A look at Heather James’ Instagram shows you exactly the candid, unfussy family photo album you’d expect, peppered with glamourous clips from her appearances on Loose Women and Lorraine, the odd F&F partnership with her granddaughter Eloise (Deborah’s daughter and her spitting image) and many pictures of Deborah and news about the Bowelbabe Fund. Because this was always Deborah’s plan, as James’ agent, CJ Brough, attests: “Deborah would talk to me about Heather and say ‘Get my mum doing stuff’.” In fact, the pair tell a difficult story of a shoot that James had done for a campaign – had stepped in, in fact, because Deborah was too poorly to take part. When the pictures were sent over, James felt that the timing was inappropriate and wanted to pull them – “She was about to die,” she says – so Brough obliged. And then, says Brough: “Deborah phoned me in a rage, and properly told me off, ‘What are you doing pulling that campaign?’ I said, ‘Your mum asked me to and I didn’t think I could bother you with it’.” But Deborah, even on her deathbed, was adamant the show must go on.
James does not find it easy, even though, like her daughter, she exudes enthusiasm and warmth, which translates so naturally on those small squares. “It still stresses me out, I’ll be honest,” she says. “I want to be out there but I don’t know what to post. I’m not your normal Instagram person.” Unlike Deborah, who thrived in that format, always knowing that what she was doing was to raise awareness, and unlike Eloise, who James has been charged with shielding. She says: “Deborah left me with, ‘Mum, Eloise loves this, protect her’.” James says that Eloise, 14, is lit with the same fire, the same energy for performance as her mother. She says ruefully: “Eloise would come on social media the whole time.” Her brother, Hugo, 16, is more circumspect and James respects that: “There is a beautiful photograph of him that I would like to put on, and he said ‘please don’t’ so I won’t.”
The James team are also conscious of external judgement. James says: “People say to me, ‘why are you working? You should be at home mourning your daughter’.” But James, a gymnastics coach, has always had a strong work ethic. She grew up, she says, in humble circumstances in Dorset and is not one to sit idle. “I went back to work straight away because that’s me. I get on with it. I think of her every moment of the day. But I also know Deborah really wanted me to continue to live a life. She said, ‘Mum, you can do this’. I love people. I love talking. If I can help people, and raise awareness for the charity work, that’s what I’m here for.”
And the people love her too. Her Instagram following is more than 100,000, and her demographics are interesting: 37% 35- to 44-year-olds, 32% 45- to 54-year-olds, and then 20% 55 to 64, 9.4% 25 to 34 and 6% over 65. This shows that while a significant amount of her audience will have been Deborah’s audience and migrated from that account, 26% of her audience are over 55, identifying with James’ own experience. Not only that, but her engagement is high, she is flooded with comments and DMs. She admits: “I finished replying to hundreds of DMs at 2am this morning, and there are 260-odd that I’ve still got to reply to on the main comments.”
Heather James’ work is powerful because it’s authentic
Because James believes in authentic relationships, the work is powerful. She did a partnership with OTO CBD because her daughter loved the product. “When Deborah was dying, the OTO Ritual CBD Serum was such a beautiful release for her. We all got through loads of it, and it helped, so I really truly believed in it, which is why I worked with them. I wouldn’t put out something that I didn’t believe in.”
As mentioned, she has worked with F&F, the Tesco clothing brand that supported Deborah for years, side-by-side with Eloise. She has also worked with Elizabeth Arden, another Deborah brand, and is delightful about her lack of skincare sophistication as opposed to that of her “Sephora kid” grandchildren. That openness is the other element driving her Instagram success. “I don’t want to do perfection. I see all these models looking brilliant in their makeup. I think ‘oh no, I didn’t even know what those Elizabeth Arden capsules were. I thought you swallowed the things, I didn’t know you open them and put them on your skin’.” But she adds: “There are a lot of other people out there who didn’t know that either.”
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She says her generation were not educated in what she calls “self-spoiling”, and are now online, wanting to learn. She would work with more fashion brands – “I love jumpsuits. Should a 66-year-old woman wear a jumpsuit? Yeah!” – and wants to learn more about haircare: “You get to my age and it’s a nightmare.” She is fond of live events. But as always, she has two things in mind. One, her audience: “I don’t like these Instagrammers who one day say ‘It’s the best product’ and then the next day they’re saying ‘This is the best product’. I know that earns them a lot of money. But I can’t do that.” And the other is her daughter’s legacy.
The moment James’ work no longer has a direct influence, the team will rethink. Says Brough: “When the Bowelbabe Fund tells us they’re not getting any impact out of this awareness, because people are just over it now, then obviously it would stop, but that isn’t the case.” Brough continues: “Deborah was only ever on Instagram to talk about bowel cancer and raise awareness. And yes, she did it while she was singing and dancing and playing with makeup and dressing up. But it was only ever about awareness. And Heather is carrying that on.”
So, James is there. Taking hours to learn how to do Reels. She says, laughing: “I’m a hands-on gymnastics coach. Give me a child, give me a child with special needs, that’s fine. Give me people, I can cope. But not computers and things like that.” But the truth is, James is coping and more. She has coped with not just losing a child, that most devastating thing, but losing a child in the public eye, the world watching her mourn. After our conversation, her son-in-law Sebastian, her husband and their children, Ben and Sarah, have a three-hour Zoom call scheduled with the Fund to discuss next steps. The life and death of the extraordinary BowelBabe has illuminated her family on a particular kind of stage, and they have stepped up in the most beautiful way. Take a bow, Heather James.
By Emilie McMeekan, CORQ features director. Picture credit: Heather James
