Last month Peter paid moving tribute to his friend Kate and the way she’d nursed Derek through his years of health problems.

He told GB News: “I know Kate very well. What’s sad about this is we feel like we have gone through these past few years with them both.

“This has been the real story of Covid. A very sad end. Kate is just such a beautiful person.”

“Whenever I saw her, we would talk. She would say how difficult things were, but she never really showed that to people.

“She stayed strong, always smiling. As you see her is exactly how she is. She is such a kind, nice person.”

Draper, a former political adviser and psychotherapist, died last month.

He was said to be one of the UK’s longest-suffering COVID patients after catching the disease in March 2020 and spending 13 months in hospital.

Garraway followed behind the coffin while the procession walked to the Church of St Mary the Virgin in Primrose Hill – where the Good Morning Britain presenter and Draper married in September 2005.

Draper, who was from Chorley in Lancashire, was a Labour Party lobbyist for almost a decade.

After leaving politics in 1998, he retrained as a psychotherapist and wrote regularly in magazines and newspapers.