EXCLUSIVE: Behind Derek Draper’s Funer@l and the Secrets of Kate Garraway’s Family on GMB!

As someone lucky enough not to have lost many close family members yet, I often find myself thinking the same thing at funer@ls. How do they do it? How are people able to get dressed, stand up and talk about their mothers, fathers, husbands and wives in front of a church full of people without breaking down? How are they able to smile as they remember that quirk or tell that anecdote – to laugh?

Anyone watching Kate Garraway speak at her husband’s funer@l on Friday will have been thinking the same. As she stood in the same spot in which she’d exchanged vows with Derek Draper almost 20 years earlier, reminding us all how they’d met, her composure and eloquence was awe-inspiring. The same should be said of her 14-year-old son, Billy, who spoke so movingly about his dad, and her 17-year-old daughter, Darcey, who carried her father’s coffin into the service.

Funer@ls are supposed to be a “celebration” of that person’s life, but I had feared that wouldn’t be possible. After all, Derek was only 56 when he di3d, having suffered extreme and prolonged complications related to Covid. What he and the family have been through is unimaginable. But a traditional Catholic funer@l mass (this was my first) turns out to be an incredible thing.

Some funer@ls can feel too abrupt, but Derek’s felt like a journey of mourning and reflection. I could see the initial sharpness of people’s grief lessening after some of his favourite hymns, feel people relax as they recognised the man they knew and loved in the eulogies, and by the end of what was a celebration, sense an acceptance that hadn’t been there at the start. Simply put, it did what a funer@l should, and gave everybody the chance to say goodbye.