I’ll miss Derek Draper, the old rascal

The death of Derek Draper, the former Labour party apparatchik, got acres of press coverage, with tributes pouring in from the great and the good, including Tony Blair. But reading the obituaries, I couldn’t help feel that they didn’t do justice to the man I first met in the early 1990s, and for a time counted among my closest friends. They neither captured the full extent of his skulduggery nor how entertaining he could be when relating the latest gossip from Blair’s inner circle.

His friend Decca Aitkenhead’s piece in the Sunday Times came closest, but she left out one of my favourite anecdotes, perhaps because it involves her. As I recall, Derek’s wife, the TV presenter Kate Garraway, had sold a package to OK! magazine about their wedding in 2005 and, as part of the deal, agreed to write an account of her ‘special day’. It was due while they were on their honeymoon and, since selling the story had been Derek’s idea, she asked him to ghost-write it for her. He agreed, and then, unbeknownst to her, called Decca and asked if she would do the honours. When the piece was published under Garraway’s byline, Decca was astonished to discover that Derek hadn’t changed a single word in her ghost-written, ‘first person’ article.

There was no trace of hypocrisy with Derek – he would describe his intrigues with the relish of a Shakespearean villain

I like that story because of the layer upon layer of duplicity it reveals, which was typical of the man. I also find the brazen cynicism of it quite appealing. That, too, was one of Derek’s hallmarks. During the time I knew him well, from 1993-95, he was unapologetic about being a rogue, bragging about his misdeeds as a Labour party fixer as he held court in Green Street, a nefarious private members’ club in Mayfair.