They shared worries, fears and tears as both battled cancer.
But what BBC News reader George Alagiah got most from Dame Deborah James was the ability to simply share.
“For those of us living with cancer,” he recalls, “I think we’re all aware that we don’t want to become a burden. You don’t want to burden people too much. So there’s a limited number of people you can talk to.
“Deborah James was one of those, as I found out, to share my dilemma, my fears, my wanting to cry with someone who I knew had gone through that and was going through it and that in itself well it was a kind of solace.
“Sharing is hugely important and when my moment to share came I was lucky enough to have someone like Deborah James to talk to.”
George, who has stage 4 bowel cancer, is just one of those touched by a legacy that will stretch well beyond Deborah’s death this week aged just 40.
Known as Bowelbabe after being diagnosed in 2016 with incurable bowel cancer, Deborah was determined to get the message out to check for the disease.
She broke taboos and saved countless lives by urging people to check their symptoms and raising £6.9million for Cancer Research UK.
Deborah, who is survived by husband Sebastien, son Hugo, 14, and daughter Eloise, 12, documented her own journey as she faced the ups and downs of the disease, always trying to help others, filming videos and funny clips to raise awareness and combat stigma.
“I was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer way back in 2014. Now stage 4, there’s no stage 5 so that gives you an idea of what’s meant to happen after that,” journalist George, 66, adds as part of a new BBC documentary Dame Deborah James: The Last Dance.
But Deborah was there to help pick him up, as she had been for so many others.
Friends paid tribute to Deborah in the BBC documentary with TV presenter Gaby Roslin who recalled her family’s experience of the disease with her father, radio presenter Clive Roslin, being diagnosed.
She recalled: “26 years ago my father was diagnosed with bowel cancer so it’s something that I’ve always felt strongly about talking about. She walked into the studio and she was this bubble of energy and craziness and laughter. I don’t think of Deborah without thinking of her laughing and singing. Cancer didn’t stop her having fun. She showed that through her dancing, her sassiness. I loved her dancing.
“I went to see her at the Royal Marsden, but I wasn’t allowed in. So I asked her what we should dance to. She said musical theatre. The nurses all danced with me.”
She added: “I’m sure wherever she is she’s singing and dancing away, with the biggest smile on her face.”
And Deborah’s friend Emma Campbell, who has breast cancer, says: “She’s had an enormous impact on me. You couldn’t help but be in her company and think if she can maintain that determination to live a big and bold and brave life, then so can I. It’s so important to share. When you’re going through a cancer experience, connection is everything, it can mean the difference between just surviving it or living through it with moments of relief or even joy at times.”
Underneath it all Deborah, and those like her knew what lay ahead, but she refused to be beaten or bowed.
And her oncologist. Prof David Cunningham, knows what a difference her ability to tell her story made.
He said: “I think of everything she’s done, sharing her story was the most important thing because that’s what inspired other people. The fact that she was prepared to share her experiences, warts and all. The good times and the bad times.”
For George that honestly was something he sorely needed when they were first introduced. He recalled how he called Dame Deborah at the Royal Marsden Hospital at an awkward time.
He said: “My cancer has continued to spread one way or another. On that occasion I’d just found out it had gone to my lungs, so it’s bowel cancer in the lungs rather than lung cancer,” he said on BBC4’s Today Programme,
“I’d read that this amazing woman had gone through the same stage and through a mutual friend, I was put in touch with her and called her.
“When I called her, she was walking down the steps of the Marsden and at that point I said I’d call her back some other time because there’s only two things happen when you’re walk out of a London hospital with cancer: you’ve had good news and you want to tell everyone, or you’ve had bad news and you want to go and cry.
“She just said, ‘No, no, no - go ahead’. And she found somewhere to sit down.”
The pair spent around half an hour talking and George was moved not just by her words, but by the timing of the call.
He says: “I told her what had happened and wanted to know, ‘Am I going to start coughing? Am I going to start bleeding? Is your guy giving you drugs mine isn’t?’ and that kind of thing.
“And it just struck me, the sheer generosity of this woman, remarkable, because she didn’t know me and it had been a big day for her having had the scan. It was just typical of what I know now she was capable of doing and did do for so many others whenever they asked.”
George, who called Dame Deborah around two years ago, echoed her call for earlier screening. He said: “If our cancer survival rates in this country sometimes don’t look as good as they are in other parts of Europe and indeed the world, it’s not because we’ve got bad doctors and bad nurses - and nurses, by the way, are huge in looking after people like me. It’s because we diagnose late. Our screening programme used to be 60 years and now they’re working their way back to 50 in England. But in 2014, had I been living in Scotland I’d have been screened a couple of times and my cancer may have been caught earlier. So that’s really important.
“For our doctors and oncologists, it’s like being called off the bench to come on and play a game that’s five-nil down and there’s five minutes to go at the end of extra time. They do a brilliant job. But until we get this diagnosis done systematically much earlier…”
George also shared his latest health news: “My cancer has continued to spread so I’ve got about four sites now. The last one, which spread last year which was why I had to have a few months off to have some very tough stuff. Basically I’ve been on chemo, with a gap of about 15 months, pretty much since 2014.
“I was in the chemo clinic yesterday and I’m sitting talking to you right now with a pump hanging off my waist trickling in its poison as we speak. That’s so-called maintenance chemo, surveillance chemo, it’s meant to be lighter. It allows me, to say, ‘OK, next week I’m going to go into the newsroom.”
George expressed deep gratitude for the devoted care he receives from his wife of 28 years, Frances Robathan, 62. The couple, who have been married for 38 years, have two sons in their 30s.
He says: “My wife Fran is my wife, carer, lover - she’s so many things. But she’s got to move from one day when I say, ‘Hey I feel absolutely great. What about that weekend trip to Amsterdam?’. And the next day I wake up and say, ‘I feel absolutely rubbish’ and she’s got to go and get the spare room ready and ‘do you fancy some soup?’
“So I think it’s really important to understand the role of the carers but also there are thousands, if not teams of thousands of people, who are having to make their own cancer journeys and work out what’s best for them.”
There is little doubt one of the best legacies of Deborah’s life is that she helped make those journeys just a little easier for many.
*Dame Deborah James: The Last Dance, is on Thursday BBC One 8.30pm and iPlayer.
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