Derek Draper: The Long Covid Struggle
Newscast
BBC
4.3 • 6.6K Ratings
🗓️ 8 January 2024
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today, we look at how Covid-19 continues to affect people’s lives after the death of author and political adviser Derek Draper, husband of Kate Garraway.
The TV presenter announced on Friday that the 56-year-old had died after living with extreme complications from Covid, and released a video message today thanking people for their support.
Is this the most high profile case of long covid? And how many people across the UK have the condition? To answer these questions, James Cook speaks to a sufferer of long Covid, Margaret O’Hara, and researcher on Covid-19, Professor David Strain.
And, on the day of the first American moon launch in over 50 years, James speaks to astronaut Chris Hadfield to find out what this mission means for the future of space travel and exploration.
You can join our Newscast online community here: https://tinyurl.com/newscastcommunityhere
Newscast brings you daily analysis of the latest political news stories from the BBC. It was presented by James Cook, and made by Jack Maclaren with Joe Wilkinson and Sam McLaren. The technical producers were Dafydd Evans and Philip Bull. The senior news editors are Jonathan Aspinwall and Sam Bonham.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:04.8 | Hello, it's James in for Adam and we've had a lot of reaction to Friday's episode which |
| 0:09.6 | looked at the awful post office scandal. |
| 0:12.1 | Here is just one |
| 0:13.1 | what's app from Sarah who says dear Adam and the newscast team I've been |
| 0:17.3 | listening to newscast since 2020 when I discovered your podcast during lockdown |
| 0:22.0 | one and I haven't missed an episode since |
| 0:25.2 | which means Sarah really does ooze stamina and newscast has been incredibly important to me |
| 0:29.8 | she says especially your COVID coverage but this is the first time I felt compelled to send you a |
| 0:34.4 | message. I just want to say thank you so much for covering the post office scandal. I've just |
| 0:39.6 | finished binge watching the TV series, she says. She felt such strong emotions watching the series |
| 0:45.0 | that I immediately turned to newscast afterwards |
| 0:47.3 | and can't put into words how much I appreciated |
| 0:50.4 | listening to this episode. |
| 0:52.2 | I actually listened to it twice. Well say that |
| 0:54.8 | thank you very much. It is very much worth listening to there's a lot of detail in |
| 0:58.7 | there about what went on |
| 1:05.0 | the story, the story. We're not going to talk about it throughout the podcast today, |
| 1:08.0 | but just a couple of updates. |
| 1:10.0 | Ritchie Sunach says he would strongly support the Honors Committee if it decided to look into revoking, |
| 1:17.0 | taking away the CBE of the former post office boss Paula Venles, who's been under a lot of pressure here, and also under pressure, Sir Ed |
| 1:25.3 | Davy, the Lib Dem leader, because he was the Postal Affairs Minister at the time, if you remember, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

