Kate Garraway has returned to presenting duties on ITV‘s Good Morning Britain this morning for the first time since the death of her husband Derek Draper, telling viewers that ‘life has to start again’ and ‘nothing has changed.’
Kate, 56, bravely opened the show with long time colleague Ben Shephard who told her she had ‘done Derek proud’ with her conduct following his funeral last week.
Garraway thanked him and admitted to feeling ‘wobbly’, but said: ‘I definitely wanted to make it about Derek not about me.
‘It was really lovely as well to feel so much love from everybody here.’
Last week, the presenter choked back tears on the programme just three days after husband Derek’s funeral to reveal heartbreaking details of his final hours – and how daughter Darcey, 17, told him, ‘We’ll be OK, Dad’ before he slipped away.
Speaking about her decision to return to the show this morning, Kate affirmed that ‘life has to start again.’
She said: ‘I don’t know how it’s going to be. Grief isn’t containable in a day or year.
‘People ask why I’m going back to work. Life has to start. We have to pick ourselves up and go on.
‘That’s what Derek would want me to do. Thank you to everyone who made it possible.
‘We have to pick ourselves up, that’s what Derek did and would want us to do.’
Garraway said today that it was lovely, but ‘odd’ to be back at the desk.
‘The make-up girls had me in tears this morning just by saying hello,’ Garraway said at the beginning of the programme.
‘Thank you to all of you at home as well, I know I mentioned it on Monday but you have been incredible.’
Co-host Ben Shephard joked he would give Garraway a bit of ‘leeway’ before saying she did her husband proud with the ‘extraordinary funeral’.
‘You really did Derek proud, it was an extraordinary thing,’ he said.
Kate also joked: ‘I’m going to be looking forward to a blow dry.
‘I’m going to be finding fake eyelashes. I’m going to be very much looking forward to applying fake tan.
‘Don’t worry, I will be a little bit more respectable by Thursday. I’ll be doing a lot of homework between now and then because I feel like I’ve been in a very small bubble.
‘So I’m going to look forward really to coming into the world and sharing what’s going on for everybody else and connecting with everybody again.
‘So, thank you for having me back, and have a little bit of patience. I might be a bit rusty … There is a new king, isn’t there? Have I caught up with that?’
It is the first time Kate has presented the show since December 8 last year when she was forced to take a break due to Derek’s deteriorating condition.
Last week, she revealed details of Derek’s final hours on the show and what her daughter had told her father before he passed.
She said her daughter Darcey had told Draper: ‘Dad, if you can’t do this we’ll be OK. You release yourself if you need to go.’
‘Don’t worry about us, don’t worry about mum. We’ll be fine because you live on through us.’
Garraway told of having similar conversations with him plus a ‘chance to hold his hand, smell his skin’ and tell him ‘we’re here’, adding: ‘Some people don’t get that’.
She also described the ‘most beautiful handwritten letter’ she was sent by David and Victoria Beckham as well as messages from King Charles, Prince William and Kate.
Garraway added: ‘I know that Catherine has been in hospital herself, so I really appreciated that.
‘And I had a letter from the King, who knows a lot about grief. It was lovely to hear from them and understand the emotions that I am going through’.
The presenter took a break from her presenting role last December after Draper had a cardiac arrest.
She is said to be under financial pressure after spending almost £1million on medical bills, following his first hospitalisation with severe Covid-19 effects in March 2020.
Sir Elton John performed an emotional song when he was among the mourners at last Friday’s funeral at the Church of St Mary The Virgin in Primrose Hill, having offered comfort to Garraway and Draper through his illness.
He sang his ballad Skyline Pigeon – which contains the lyrics ‘fly away, skyline pigeon fly, towards the dreams, you’ve left so very far behind’ – in tribute to Draper.
Sir Elton had previously invited Draper and Garraway to be guests of honour at his Farewell Yellow Brick Road concert at London’s O2 last year.
She told her Smooth Radio listeners last April that Sir Elton had been ‘so supportive’ of her family since her husband fell ill.
Garraway, who has children Darcey, 17, and Billy, 14, with the former political adviser, revealed last month how her husband has died after suffering a heart attack before Christmas following a long battle with Covid.
The couple’s daughter Darcey was among the six pallbearers at last Friday’s funeral, which Garraway today told GMB was the 17-year-old’s choice.
She said: ‘Darcey came into the room when we were talking about it and said please will you let me carry the coffin.
‘And I thought, crikey, that’s a practical challenge – anybody who’s ever done it, it’s a heavy thing.
‘And she said, ‘I want to do it’ and basically insisted on doing it and I thought that was a beautiful thing that she carried her dad.’
Of Darcey and son Billy, she added: ‘For their grieving, we are in the foothills – we know there is a long way to go.’
‘They didn’t want to pressure him to keep going. I don’t think he did feel that, I think he kept going because he wanted to be here.’
GMB stars Charlotte Hawkins, Ben Shephard, Richard Madeley, Alex Beresford, Rob Rinder, Susanna Reid, Sean Fletcher and Richard Arnold also attended the funeral.
Mourners also reflected Draper’s previous work as a New Labour advisor, with others attending including former Prime Minister Sir Tony Blair, current Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and ex-Labour MPs such as Lord Mandelson and Ed Balls.
Also there were shadow climate change secretary Ed Miliband, Sir Tony’s wife Cherie Blair and former Number 10 director of communications Alastair Campbell.
Kate previously said her ’emotions are at 110 per cent’ following the funeral and also about an ‘outpouring of love for everyone that has supported me’.
She said: ‘The unbelievable love that we all have as a GMB family – it’s just wonderful, and ITV generally. I think we are just very, very lucky.
‘You’re going to make me cry already, so let’s try and get a couple of minutes in – the love that we have as a family altogether which is people watching at home.
‘It’s you at home, that we’re so connected, and we’ve always been connected in all our joys and all our fun and the challenges of life of which poor Derek has faced head on and our family has done as well.
James Parker is a UK-based entertainment aficionado who delves into the glitz and glamour of the entertainment industry. From Hollywood to the West End, he offers readers an insider’s perspective on the world of movies, music, and pop culture.
