Kate Garraway
Kate Garraway | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Kathryn Mary Garraway[1] 4 May 1967[citation needed] |
| Occupation(s) | Journalist, Presenter |
| Notable credit | GMTV |
| Spouse(s) | Ian Rumsey (1998 - 2002) Derek Draper (2005-present) |
Kathryn Mary Garraway (born 4 May 1967) is an English journalist and presenter.
TV career
Garraway went to Fitzharrys School in Abingdon, then graduated from BathSpa University with a BA in English and History. Her broadcasting career began with BBC Radio Oxford, and by 1994, she had become an Independent Television News trainee journalist.
In 1995, Garraway moved to Central News as a production journalist, reporter, and news presenter. It was during her time there that she was noticed by Meridian Broadcasting's head of news who poached her (after seeing one of three minute bulletins) to become the main presenter on their night Meridian Tonight programme. This offered enough visibility on a wider stage to be selected as part of the team of presenters which launched the BBC's 24-hour rolling news channel, BBC News 24, a period which would include the anchoring of such stories as the signing of the Good Friday Agreement.
In 1998, Nick Pollard, Head of Sky News, offered Garraway a new presenting role; she joined their breakfast programme, Sunrise, as their main anchor, covering stories such as the Kosovo crisis, the Paddington rail crash, the Turkish earthquakes, and the Iraq bombing.
In 2000, Garraway joined GMTV as a main presenter. During her time at GMTV, Garraway has presented a travel strand, Where on Earth? and presented live material from the Cannes Film Festival. The GMTV website states that Kate is now the anchorwoman for GMTV, although many people still believe it to be Fiona Phillips.
In 2007, Garraway became a questioner on the new National Lottery show The People's Quiz.
Kate appeared as a celebrity contestant on the 2007 series of BBC1's Strictly Come Dancing, where her dance partner was Anton Du Beke. Despite being bottom of the leader board with scores ranging between 16 and 26, the public continued to save her from being voted off until the seventh week, when she danced the Paso Doble, she was eventually voted off by the judges when she was in the dance-off alongside John Barnes. In February 2008, she launched legal action against the Sunday Mirror after it published a photograph of her embracing Strictly Come Dancing partner Anton Du Beke.[2]
Garraway has also made numerous television appearances on shows such as:
- Loose Women
- Have I Got News For You
- The Wright Stuff
- Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
- hosting ITV's Too Many Cooks
- presenting Beef Encounter for Channel 4 with Jon Snow (a current affairs special on the B.S.E. enquiry)
Personal life
Garraway lived in Oxfordshire before marriage, and now has a home in North London. She married Central TV producer Ian Rumsey in Abingdon, Oxfordshire in 1998. He was her former boss at Meridian TV in Kent around 1995, and was two years younger than her, but they divorced in April 2002. She said it was due to his relationship with twenty-four-year-old Hannah Stewart-Jones (now Shellswell), a TV reporter at his Oxford studio, which he denied. In July 2005, she announced on GMTV that she was engaged to psychotherapist Derek Draper whom she married later that year in the London Borough of Camden, as covered in an OK! magazine exclusive. Draper is the former political aide to Peter Mandelson and was at the centre of the scandal known as Lobbygate. The couple celebrated the birth of their first child, a baby girl, Darcey, on 10 March 2006. She was criticized in the newspaper press after she was photographed smoking whilst pregnant. [3] [4]
Kate Garraway flew into a rage at a council planning meeting where she was told to alter a new extension, according to a report shown in the Daily Mail.[5]
On 18 October 2007 Garraway's car was crushed over road tax because the tax disc of her VW Beetle was out of date.
Throughout the first part of 2007, many fans had been complaining about Kate's sudden weight loss. However, in an interview she admitted that she had finally been diagnosed with an overactive thyroid which is very common in new mothers. This meant she lost over 3 stones in weight and was very hyperactive.
On 10 April 2008 Garraway earned substantial damages in the high court from Mirror Group Newspapers over unfounded allegations published in the Daily Mirror and Sunday Mirror in February that she had an affair with her Strictly Come Dancing colleague Anton du Beke. The Mirror group paid her costs and committed itself not to repeat the claims.[6]
Kate Garraway has earned a strong male fan base, particularly on the internet, due to her good looks and voluptuous figure. A fan site, Garrawench.com, was estimated to have 30,000 members by the Daily Mail at the height of its popularity. Recently a banana which Kate bit into was sold for £1,650 to a male fan with the money given to charity.[7] Her hobbies include scuba diving, bodyboarding, playing the clarinet, and movie-going. She is a Gillingham F.C. football fan.
References
- ^ England and Wales Marriages 1984-2005
- ^ http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/feb/12/sundaymirror.trinitymirror Garraway to sue Sunday Mirror
- ^ Moodie, Clemmie (2006-02-25). "Kate Puffaway". Daily Mail.
- ^ Cummins, Fiona (2006-02-25). "Smoked Out". Daily Record. Retrieved 2006-06-04.
- ^ "More woe for GMTV's Kate Garraway as parking officials crush her car". Daily Mail. 2007-08-18.
- ^ Tara Conlan "Mirror titles pay out to Garraway", The Guardian, 10 April 2008.
- ^ "Happy Tenth Ebay: £25bn site that has us all buying and selling". The Mirror. 2005-09-05.
External links
- Kate Garraway at gm.tv
- Kate Garraway at IMDb