Emotional journey
In Kate Garraway: Finding Derek, the breakfast TV presenter details what her family life has been like since her husband was hospitalised a year ago
One year on from contracting Covid-19, Kate Garraway’s husband Derek Draper remains seriously ill.
In this one-off programme, the Good Morning Britain presenter gives viewers an insight into her life without him by her side.
Derek was hospitalised in March 2020. Despite coming down with the coronavirus two weeks after her husband, Kate, 53, recovered and remained adamant that “normal life must continue”.
Nevertheless, she’s now facing the reality of adjusting to a very different way of living.
Spanning from July 2020 to earlier this month, the show charts how Kate and her family have coped with day-to-day life while Derek remains in hospital. At the start, we find Kate in her husband’s study, where she has kept his Financial Times he gets delivered every day, referring to the stack of newspapers as “a little capsule of time”.
She said: “They’re all here ready for you Derek when you come back. If he can wake up and he can begin to piece things together. Maybe it will help him process the time that’s passed.”
Kate detailed the extent of Derek’s condition in July 2020.
She said: “Derek is the sickest person the team of doctors in the lung hospital have treated who has lived. His kidneys have failed, his liver’s failed. His heart is being supported by medicine.
“The best way of coping with that is to think about what I have got control over. I guess that is making sure the children feel OK.”
Kate has two children with Derek, 53, – Darcey, 15, and Billy, 11. Throughout the course of the film, we also hear from Kate’s colleague and friend of 20 years, Ben Shephard.
He said: “Kate is brilliant at sharing what she’s going through. She’s always been very aware of the fact that people might think she’s looking for sympathy but she’s not at all.
“It’s testament to who she is, her strength of character, her positivity, her brilliance that she has got this far and managed it so well.
“I keep thinking at some point there’s going to be a huge crash and what she’s been through is going to hit her.”
As well as providing an unflinching account of the last year, Kate also meets with survivors of the virus. Together, they try to navigate the somewhat unknown world of life post-Covid, while Kate hopes for good news about Derek, who has been in hospital longer than any other Covid patient in Britain.
But for journalist Kate, her family and friends, the greatest news story would be that he is coming home.
‘Derek is the sickest person the team of doctors in the lung hospital have treated who has lived’ Kate Garraway