Entertainment
Ben Shephard says Kate Garraway’s husband was ‘going backwards’ after filming ITV documentary before coming home
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Good Morning Britain’s Ben Shephard has spoken about the events that led to Kate Garraway’s husband Derek Draper returning home from hospital, explaining that he was ‘going backwards’ in his recovery.
On Thursday, it was confirmed that Derek, 53, had returned home after being treated in hospital for a year.
The former lobbyist was admitted to hospital in March 2020 after contracting Covid-19, becoming Britain’s longest-surviving coronavirus hospital patient.
On Friday’s edition of This Morning, Ben spoke to Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford about the positive development, saying that it’s ‘remarkable’ Derek has gone home after the virus caused significant damage to his body.
Ben, who works with Kate on GMB, explained that the ‘whole plan’ for Kate’s recent documentary Finding Derek, which documented Derek’s Covid-19 battle, was that ‘hopefully at the end of it there’ll be this lovely moment when he comes home and we can all be together’.
‘Course that didn’t happen. And in fact at the end of the documentary, at the end of it it says Derek is going to stay in hospital until the end of this year, he was due to stay in hospital until the end of this year,’ Ben said.
The TV presenter said ‘that’s changed dramatically in the last week or so’ following discussions between Kate and Derek’s doctors.
Ben stated that while there were some ‘great strides being made’ by the end of the documentary, the second lockdown had a significant toll on Derek, Kate and the family.
‘Because we went into the second lockdown, and she and the kids and his family couldn’t see him, they weren’t getting the contact, so he’d gone backwards a little bit from where we saw in that documentary,’ he told Eamonn and Ruth.
‘And I think the feeling was right we need to try and stimulate him a bit more, let’s get him home as soon as we can and then suddenly all of a sudden he’s back.’
When asked by Ruth whether Kate is feeling ‘frightened’ over Derek’s return home, who is receiving round-the-clock care at their home, Ben said that Kate ‘sort of described it a bit like coming home with a newborn’.
‘You know, you’ve been waiting for such a long time to have this and take it home but then there’s that realisation, right ok, this next part is hugely responsible. She’s hugely responsible for him,’ he said.
This Morning airs weekdays at 10am on ITV.
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