Kate’s tears as she tells Piers of stricken Derek’s ‘I love you’ breakthrough
Good Morning Britain star reveals Covid-hit husband is talking again in emotional interview on Morgan’s last ever Life Stories – before she takes over
THEY were the words Kate Garraway thought she would never hear her Covid-stricken husband Derek Draper say again.
But the Good Morning Britain presenter reveals tonight that the former Labour spin doctor, whom she has nursed since his near-fatal medical crisis last year, has finally uttered the phrase she has longed to hear: ‘I love you.’
Fighting back tears, Ms Garraway vows to Piers Morgan in his final episode of Life Stories that she will ‘never give up’ on Mr Draper after his 13month battle in hospital – the longest of any surviving Covid patient.
In the highly emotional interview, she discusses with MoS columnist Morgan how her husband managed three words – ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’ – to him on the telephone the night before the programme was recorded last month.
She continues: ‘It’s moments like that which make you realise he is there, and we have had others. He will turn to me and say “I love you.” He is there, he has fought so hard to stay in this world and I’m not giving up on him, ever.
‘He will have moments of clarity, then it’s like he disappears but then he finds a voice.’
Ms Garraway, mother of Darcey, 15, and Billy, 12, was left devastated when Mr Draper was hospitalised with Covid in March 2020. Along with doctors, she feared he wouldn’t survive – but he defied the odds to return to the family’s North London home in April, where he is continuing his recovery.
Revealing the torment she has endured, the television host adds: ‘It does feel like I have walked through a fiery furnace, or fell down a rabbit hole. The world went dark and I’m still looking for the light at the end of the tunnel.
‘Covid has devastated him, from the top of his head to the tip of his toe. His digestive system, his liver, his heart, his nervous system. We’re pretty sure the inflammation did pass through his brain. Fundamentally he is in a terrible state, but look: he’s alive.’
Tonight’s show, which airs on ITV at 8pm, is Morgan’s last after 103 episodes which have seen him interview showbusiness legends including Sir Rod Stewart, the late Dame Barbara Windsor and Dame Joan Collins. He has also interrogated senior politicians, including John Prescott and Sir Keir Starmer.
He will be replaced by Ms Garraway, 54, who won a National Television Award in September for her documentary Finding Derek.
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 23 One of the benefits of getting divorced from the ‘ITV family’ – which, for all the fake smiles, is even more dysfunctional than the Royal Family – is that I no longer have to attend the annual ‘Palooza’, an absurdly named event that exposes the network’s on-screen stars to abject ridicule in front of thousands of rowdy drunken advertisers.
In my absence, ITV’s director of television Kevin Lygo – who oversaw my sudden departure from Good Morning Britain after Meghan Markle wrote to chief executive Dame Carolyn McCall to demand my head on a plate for criticising her – gleefully stamped on my grave in his speech at the Festival Hall.
Referring to me as evil Harry Potter villain Voldemort, Lygo quipped: ‘He’s not here, is he? Of course, he’s not here – he f***ing walked off, didn’t he?’
He went on: ‘No, we miss Piers…’
As he said this, he theatrically shook his head in violent contradiction of this statement. ‘But he’s gone…’
Lygo then made a crude ‘w ***** ’ hand signal, to raucous laughter from an audience including Holly Willoughby, Bear Grylls and Brian May.
‘… and that’s that.’
My first thought on hearing about this was that I should write immediately to Dame Carolyn, say this derogatory attack was very damaging to my mental health and insist that Lygo is fired.
But my second thought, because I’m not a whiny weak woke wastrel, was to chuckle because it made me laugh.
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 26 The weirdest thing about my dreary long Covid is the complete lack of a sense of smell. Tonight, during a pre-Ashes dinner at the Chelsea Arts Club, former England cricket captain Mike Atherton revealed he’s had the condition – anosmia – since birth. As he said, the problems this creates include an inability to know whether food is off, if wine is corked (not that I can taste it anyway), if clothes need cleaning, or if the gas has been left on.
But on a positive note, you don’t have to endure cigarette smoke, unfortunate body odours, dog mess or ghastly aftershaves.
‘I’m actually better off than you,’ Mike observed. ‘Because whereas you miss all sorts of delicious smells that you know and love, I’ve never experienced them, so have no clue what I’m missing.’
He’s right.
I never fully appreciated the simple unadulterated joy of a freshly brewed coffee until suddenly I couldn’t smell it and it tasted like charcoaled water.
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 28 Yesterday, I took my ten-year-old daughter Elise to watch Arsenal beat Newcastle and she spent much of the game reading her book Dork Diaries, which I wrongly assumed was Gavin Williamson’s new memoir.
Today, I took her to the Royal Albert Hall to watch new tennis superstar Emma Raducanu play in the UK for the first time since her thrilling US Open triumph, and Elise was completely enthralled for two hours.
Emma, 19, is not just a fabulously talented athlete, she’s also a remarkably engaging, eloquent, confident and graceful young lady with a refreshing aversion to whining or selfpity and a ferocious will to win.
(I loved the way she bounced back from her Wimbledon wobble to win a major tournament just three months later.)
Twice during this friendly exhibition match, her opponent Elena-Gabriela Ruse invited a young ball-boy and ball-girl to face serves on her behalf, and both times Emma promptly smashed savage aces past their flailing rackets.
If you want to know where this merciless streak comes from, she revealed in a postmatch chat that her parents – Emma’s mum is Chinese and her dad Romanian – had separately berated her the day before for saying she was tired.
Not that she was complaining.
‘Pressure is a privilege,’ she said. ‘I thrive on the adrenaline. I don’t really think about other people’s opinions or expectations. The only ones I have are that of myself to improve and get better.’
Elise came home buzzing with excitement about Emma Raducanu, and wanting to be like her. I can’t think of a better role model.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 29 The naming of the new Covid variant Omicron mystified many people, but not me and Boris Johnson. The World Health Organisation has followed the Greek alphabet for labelling variants of interest during the pandemic.
The last one, designated on August 30, was called Mu, so it was expected this new one would be called Nu, but WHO decided it sounded too like New, so would be confusing, and they also ruled out Xi, which comes next, lest it offend China’s president.
Hence Omicron.
For decades, my party trick has been to rattle off the Greek alphabet, which remains the only thing I can remember from years studying classics at prep school.
And Boris can do the same.
During an old GQ interview we did together, he name-dropped Achilles, so I challenged him to recite the Greek alphabet and he instantly rattled it all off – faultlessly.
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 30 Tonight, GB News host Colin Brazier accidentally told his viewers that ‘Piers Morgan’ had led a flashmob of Covidiots on a Tube train, wailing: ‘Wearing a mask is like trying to keep a fart in your trousers!’
Of course, it was Piers Corbyn.
This confusion is happening with alarming regularity and I don’t understand it.
One of us is a tuneless inflammatory attention-seeker, with a brother named Jeremy, and vociferously campaigned against the Iraq War.
And the other… oh, wait.
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 5 My last show for ITV, an emotioncharged Life Stories with Kate Garraway, airs tonight at 8pm. One of the contributors is Tony Blair, who also offered his on-camera thoughts about my interrogatory skills.
‘The thing that really made Piers very good at doing the show, and makes him an extraordinary figure in any event,’ he said, ‘is that he’s prepared to say things other people may think but don’t have the courage to say.’
I’ve often asked Life Stories guests what they’d like as their epitaph.
I’d take that as mine.