Lorraine Kelly has spoken about her final visit to Deborah James in hospital and said she really thought her colleague and friend would "bounce back".
Last night, the 40-year-old, who was diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer in 2016, took to Twitter to tell her followers that she was now in a hospice surrounded by her friends and family.
Lorraine had teamed up with Deborah for her ITV show's No Butts campaign, which raises awareness of bowel cancer.
The pair became close friends and Lorraine spoke to Dr Hilary Jones today about Deborah's heartbreaking news.
Lorraine said: "The only thing, Hilary, is that she always just bounced back and I just expected her to. Recently I went to see her in the hospital and - although she was very thin - she was Deborah!
"She was full of life, she was funny, she was making everybody laugh, she was her usual self and I thought, 'This is another wee hiccup along the line'."
Dr Hilary said: "She's got to where she has against the odds - she's tried new treatments, she's tried treatments that could potentially cause problems.
"She's been a kind of trialist for many new forms of therapy and amazing to see where she's got to now. I loved her latest post which says, 'No regrets, enjoy life!'"
Earlier, Lorraine joined Susanna Reid and Richard Madeley as she spoke about Deborah's campaign to raise money for Cancer Research.
So far, Deborah has raised more than £1million in just 24 hours and Lorraine explained: "This fantastic idea that we buy her a drink, and the money we would spend on the drink, we would put it into the Bowel Babe fund."
When the fund was sitting at £800k this morning, Lorraine gushed over the amount raised.
She said: "She'll be absolutely thrilled and overjoyed with that!"
But appearing to choke up, Lorraine continued: "I thought, as I always do, that she would bounce back... but she's getting very well looked after by everybody that loves her. So we'll be talking about that today."
It comes after much-loved BBC star Deborah penned on Monday: "The tweet I never wanted to write. The time has come to say goodbye.
"It has been 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 wine to see me out and raise vital funds."
*Lorraine airs weekdays at 9am on ITV
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