HOW Derek Draper must long for the days when he was best known as the Sancho Panza to Peter Mandelson’s Don Quixote and not the muck-raking little turd he is regarded as today. The curious thing is that “Dolly” knows how hurtful vile untruths can be. His delightful wife, television presenter Kate Garraway, was forced to seek redress in the High Court after the Sunday Mirror’s outrageous libel that she had sought succour in the arms of another – Anton Du Beke, her partner in TV’s Strictly Come Dancing. The newspaper had to cough up a six-figure sum. Dolly’s response to the smears about leading Tories devised by his chum, the now very ex-spin-doctor Damian McBride, was: “Absolutely totally brilliant, Damian.” Presumably he takes a different view when he is on the receiving end. Incidentally, there is no truth whatsoever in any suggestion that Derek Draper is a Conservative Party plant on a secret mission to discredit Labour. But there are a number of people who wish there was.
