Cheeky charmer Derek Draper ‘caused chaos for fun’ & left future wife Kate Garraway thinking first date was a ‘wind-up’
TELEVISION presenter Kate Garraway’s husband Derek Draper has lost his brave battle for survival nearly four years after becoming gravely ill with Covid at the start of the pandemic.
The former lobbyist and political advisor, who went on to become a psychotherapist during a colourful and controversial life, succumbed after suffering a heart attack in December, it was announced today.
His attempts to recover, and his family’s devoted support, captured the heart of the nation after he contracted the virus in March 2020.
He went on to suffer a serious case of Long Covid, which initially left him hospitalised for a year, and from which he never recovered.
Kate announced the heartbreaking news in a moving Instagram post today.
She wrote: “I’m sad to have to tell you all that my darling husband Derek has passed away.
“Derek was surrounded by his family in his final days and I was by his side holding his hand throughout the last long hours and when he passed.”
During an eventful 56-year life Derek’s sense of fun and risk-taking bravado saw him become embroiled in two high-profile political scandals and get sacked for phoning his radio station from a brothel hot tub.
Kate, 56, once said of him: “If the situation’s going on quite smoothly, Derek will create chaos, just for the fun of it.”
But Derek, who leaves behind children Darcey, 17, and Billy, 14, credited his wife for turning his life around and calming him down after saying his wilder side had been a mask for his earlier depression.
“I haven’t been depressed for years, since just before I met Kate, who has changed me for the better anyway,” he said in 2006.
“I eventually realised I had been masking the depression for years with overwork, drinking or womanising… the drink, drugs and promiscuity, were all toys and inside, unbeknownst to me, the little child part of me was in the driving seat.”
Derek was born in Chorley, Lancs, and went to Southlands High School before going on to Runshaw College in Leyland and then the University of Manchester.
While at university he became student union communications officer and met Labour Club activist Charlotte Raven, now an author, who went on to be part of a successful campaign to oust him, before the pair subsequently had a four-year relationship.
Political scandals
Derek began his political career in 1990, when he became the constituency secretary for MP Nick Brown.
He left two years later to work as a researcher for former Labour Cabinet Minister Peter Mandelson.
In 1996 he became a director of a lobbying firm called GPC Market Access, where he helped set up the New Labour organisation Progress.
During the late 1990s Derek also worked as the Political Editor of the Modern Review, an occasional columnist for the Daily Express, and a presenter on Talk Radio UK.
In 1998 he made headlines when he was caught up in a political scandal dubbed ‘Lobbygate’.
He was recorded telling an undercover reporter, posing as a businessman, how he could sell access to government ministers and create tax breaks for clients.
Derek was heard saying: “There are 17 people who count in this government … [to] say I am intimate with every one of them is the understatement of the century”.
Derek denied the allegations and accused the paper, The Observer, of attempting to entrap him. But he was still sacked by the Daily Express.
As well as his employment with GPC ending, he was also fired from Talk Radio in 1999 after calling the James Whale Show from a hot tub in an Amsterdam brothel, where he passed the phone to a prostitute to say hello.
Derek quit politics and gained an MA in psychology from the Wright Institute in California and another in psychotherapy in England.
He went on to become a member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, writing for various publications on the subject.
‘Unlikely couple’
It was in 2004, shortly after a spell in the Priory clinic with depression, that Derek met Kate.
The pair were introduced when their mutual friend, GMTV’s then political editor Gloria De Piero, set up a drinks event.
Derek said of the planned matchmaking: “I remember saying to Gloria, ‘As if I’d want to go out with someone from breakfast telly!’
“I bought the stereotype – high maintenance bimbo only interested in glitz and glamour.”
Kate thought he was “funny and clever”, but she said of their first meeting: “Derek arrived thinking it was a date and that I was being incredibly cool by ignoring him.
“He asked me out, but the day of our date he called to say he had a clash: he’d promised to serve wine at an amateur watercolour painting exhibition at his church.
“I really thought it was a wind-up. But I turned up and he was indeed serving wine to the congregation in a salmon-pink jumper.”
Romance blossomed and in the summer of 2005 Kate, then 38, fell pregnant with their daughter Darcey by a “happy accident”.
They tied the knot in a plush ceremony in London that September, followed by a glitzy Park Lane reception.
During 2008 Derek made a return to British politics as an unpaid adviser to Ray Collins, then General Secretary of the Labour Party, and set up a website called LabourList to discuss matters concerning the party.
But it was not long before Derek was caught up in another political scandal, for which he ended up apologising.
Newspaper reports revealed PM Gordon Brown’s special adviser Damian McBride had sent emails to Derek discussing plans to set up a blog, which would be used to post false rumours about the private lives of prominent Conservatives and their spouses.
David Cameron, Nadine Dorries and George Osborne were among the targets.
Political blogger Paul Staines got hold of the smear plans, leading to apologies from McBride, Brown, and Derek, who quit as editor of LabourList following the scandal.
After that Derek – who penned the books Blair’s 100 Days during his first spell in politics and a self-help guide, Life Support, in 2009 – stepped back from the limelight.
He even revoked his membership with the Labour Party after 35 years in August 2019.
Family heartbreak
But Derek and his family’s world came crashing down when he was taken critically ill with Covid.
He was put in an induced coma and it was 200 days before he was able to say his first word in hospital, which was “pain”.
His illness scuppered plans for him and Kate to have a second wedding in August 2020.
Derek had popped the question for a second time following an emotional reunion with Kate when she completed her Aussie jungle stint on 2019’s I’m A Celebrity.
At the time, Kate said: “He very sweetly said that while he was watching me in the jungle, he fell in love with me all over again.
“I don’t know why because I looked like death warmed up, honestly.
“When I headed over the bridge, he came with my engagement ring in his pocket. I’d left it with him to avoid it being damaged with fish guts and whatever might get hurled at me.
“He burst into tears, then got down on one knee just off camera around the corner, and proposed in front of our kids Darcey and Billy, and said ‘Let’s renew our wedding vows’.”
That happy moment seemed a distant memory during Derek’s first 13 agonising months in hospital, with Kate even being prevented from seeing him during the third lockdown.
Eventually, there was a glimmer of good news when it was finally decided Derek could return home on a trial basis, even though he was still immobile and extremely ill.
Sharing her struggle, Kate released a documentary called ‘Kate Garraway: Finding Derek’, which aired in March 2021.
She revealed how she had made their home wheelchair accessible and installed a hospital bed in their lounge.
The documentary featured the heartbreaking moment Derek told Kate he couldn’t go on any longer.
In an update in September 2021, Kate said he was still receiving round-the-clock care and sleeping 20 hours a day.
The virus had caused brain injuries, kidney failure and liver damage, and led to holes developing in his heart.
In 2021, Kate made a second documentary called ‘Caring for Derek’.
The following March, Derek went to Mexico for a clinical trial treatment – but a month later Kate said “he can understand, sometimes do odd words, but can’t express himself”.
There was a further setback when Derek developed sepsis in the summer of 2022, which led to another spell in hospital “fighting for his life”, and in October the severe infection returned.
In another blow in January 2023, Derek was hurt when he slipped out of his wheelchair while returning home from hospital in a taxi.
But in a break from the torment, Derek was able to join Kate at Windsor Castle in June this year when she collected her MBE for services to broadcasting, journalism and charity from Prince William.
Derek also made it to an Elton John concert in April.
Speaking about the occasional moments when her spirits were raised, whenever Derek managed to communicate in whispers, Kate said: “It’s things like that that really lift you up.
“But then the next day he is just completely still.”
Only last month though, Kate was still clinging to optimism, saying “we are still hopeful he will improve but we have no clear timeline on this”.
At the start of this month she shared hopes for Derek being home for a family Christmas. Tragically that hope has been cruelly extinguished.