‘Covid changed everything’: Tragic Derek Draper note revealed in Kate Garraway documentary
Derek Draper wrote a message in a notebook summing up what had happened to his life. It read: “Covid changed everything.”
The tragic note is revealed in the opening moments of a new ITV documentary, Kate Garraway: Derek’s Story, which is the final instalment in a trilogy of programmes showing the devastating consequences of the virus.
Draper, the former New Labour adviser, writes: “My name is Derek Draper. I want you to hear my story.”
The programme also chronicles what Garraway, his wife of 19 years, describes as a “broken” care system – and the enormous financial cost of caring for a loved one.
Draper was left unable to perform basic tasks and required round-the-clock care, as Garraway faced bureaucratic obstacles to secure an adequate care plan.
The documentary highlights the enormous cost of care and the postcode lottery on which it depends. The television presenter was paying almost £4,000 per week and estimates that, with the cost of rehabilitative therapies, the total bill was up to £800,000.
She says in the documentary, to be shown on Tuesday evening: “Derek’s care costs more than my salary from TV. And that’s before you pay for a mortgage, before you pay for any household bills, before you pay for anything for the kids.
“I’m not going to pretend, by the way, that I’m poorly paid. I have an incredible job that I love, which is well-paid. But it’s not enough.”
Garraway adds: “Time and time again, the system keeps telling us that Derek isn’t sick enough, doesn’t have enough of a health need to qualify for funded care.
“Derek’s care, the basic need – this is not including any therapy, which I’m happy to pay on top – is nearly £4,000 a week. And how can I afford that? How can anybody afford nearly £16,000 a month?
“If that’s what it’s like for me, what on earth is it like for everybody else? Something has to be done or the whole service, the people working in it, everything is going to break.”
Returning from the hospital to begin caring for Draper at home felt like “falling off a cliff”, Garraway says.
“The system we have at the moment in terms of supporting people – and there are millions of people in the situation like Derek’s for many other reasons than Covid – it doesn’t allow you to feel content because you’re not sure if things are going to be stripped away.”
Draper’s carers and therapists appear in the documentary, alongside his teenage children, Darcey and Billy. Darcey, 17, carried the coffin at her father’s funeral.
Carers ‘given a voice’
Draper contracted Covid at the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020. It affected all of his major organs, including his brain.
At points in the programme, Garraway expresses cautious optimism about his condition. “There’s still that jeopardy that the damage might take him. But what I’m trying to do is just be in the moments as we have them,” she says.
“I don’t look forward into the future because every time I feel ‘this is really fantastic’ and we’ve had some amazing moments, something terrifying has happened.”
Draper was being treated at a brain cell clinic in Mexico when he suffered a cardiac arrest shortly before Christmas. Garraway flew him back to the UK, where he died on Jan 3.
Speaking earlier this month, Garraway said: “Obviously when we started making this documentary early last year, we had no idea the events that would unfold that ultimately took Derek from us. And in January 2024, I wondered if it was right that it should ever come to air.
“But I didn’t want to let those who have given us so much support over the last four years down and the carers paid and unpaid who, in their thousands of letters to me, feel Derek’s story has given them a voice.
“Also, I remembered so vividly that the idea of making this third documentary at all came from Derek himself.”
Kate Garraway: Derek’s Story airs on Tuesday March 26 at 9pm on ITV1, ITVX and STV.
