Deborah James: Lorraine Kelly becomes visibly emotional during heartfelt tribute to BBC podcast host

Lorraine Kelly delivered an emotional tribute to podcaster and activist Deborah James on her ITV talk show on Tuesday (10 May).

James recently told followers she didn’t know “how long I’ve got left” after being transfered to at-home hospice care to treat her terminal bowel cancer.

Over £1m has been raised in the past day as part of a fundraising effort, with the money going to Cancer Research UK.

“I know she is watching now, and she wants to say ‘thank you’,” said Kelly. “She is about to get to £1million, so thank you.”

James, who presented the BBC podcast You, Me And The Big C, shared a message with her followers on Twitter yesterday (Monday).

“The tweet I never wanted to write,” she wrote. “The time has come to say goodbye. 5 years to prepare, doesn’t make it any easy. I’m under hospice at home care, & I’m spending my time surrounded by my family. Please buy me a [drink] to see me out and raise vitial funds.”

“What she’s doing is asking everyone to buy her a drink,” said Kelly. “Well you don’t actually do that, but what you do is donate to her Bowel Babe fund.”

“I’ve been looking at this all morning, and it’s really cheered me up. It’s astonishing it really is. I think she’ll definitely get to a million, fingers crossed. We’ll never know how many lives she saved.”

The presenter added: “The only thing is she always bounced back. Recently I went to see her in the hospital and she was really thin. But she was Deborah. She was making everyone laugh, I just thought, ‘she’ll bounce back’.”

You can donate to the campaign here.