The TV host, who is married to the former Labour adviser turned psychotherapist Derek Draper, will receive an undisclosed six-figure sum from tabloids the Sunday Mirror and Daily Mirror. Her solicitor, Rachel Atkins, told Mr Justice Eady at the High Court in London that the newspapers’ publishers, MGN Ltd, now accepted that there was "no truth whatsoever" in the claims printed in February of this year and apologised.
Ms Garraway, 39, who was in court with her husband, said that she was pleased the truth had now been made public. "I am glad that this matter is now over. No one likes to take legal action against a newspaper but I could see no alternative. The way my friendship with Anton was twisted into something sordid was terribly unfair and upsetting. I wanted everyone to know that what had been written was completely wrong. The accusations threatened to cast a shadow over the wonderful time I had on Strictly Come Dancing, but now I can feel good about it all again."
Mr Draper described the months since the articles were published as "stressful" and defended his wife's right to maintain a friendship with Mr Du Beke: "This has been a stressful time but we felt we had to fight for a complete apology and damages because this story was so entirely false and therefore deeply upsetting. It is horrid to attack a couple's marriage in this way just because they have a public profile. I have always been glad that Kate and Anton became such good friends and felt sick when that was distorted into something else entirely. Women — and men — should be allowed to be friends with people of the opposite sex without people leaping to the completely wrong conclusion."In court, the couple's solicitor said the pair, who have a two-year-old daughter, "are and were as faithful, happy and in love at the time of the publication as they had ever been".
"The plain truth was that the claimant and Anton Du Beke became friends during Strictly Come Dancing. Since then they had often worked and spent time together. Given that the defendant had ignored the claimant's denials prior to and at the time of publication, the claimant felt she had no option but to immediately issue proceedings for defamation."
Ms Atkins said that the Sunday Mirror article was accompanied by several pictures of Ms Garraway going about her normal daily life which were presented in such a way that they purported to back up the allegations. These were taken without her knowledge and did not support an allegation of an illicit affair. The Daily Mirror article, the following day, was entitled "Strictly No Crisis . . . GMTV's Kate show of unity after kiss with dancer star" — from which readers might have concluded that she was reduced to putting forward a hopelessly unconvincing and false denial of her affair.
MGN's counsel, Elizabeth Prochaska, said that while it did not intend expressly to state that Ms Garraway was having an affair with Mr Du Beke, nor that her denials of such an allegation were unconvincing, it now accepted that the articles implied that. "Through me, the defendant offers its apologies to the claimant for the distress and embarrassment caused by these articles. The defendant accepts that any suggestion that the claimant betrayed her husband, Derek Draper, and was unfaithful to him by having an affair with Anton Du Beke is false and undertakes never to repeat such an allegation."
