Kate Garraway
From Free net encyclopedia
Current revision
Kate Garraway (born in Abingdon, Oxfordshire on May 4 1968) is a British television news presenter.
She graduated 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. From there, in 1995, she moved to Central News as a production journalist, reporter and news presenter.
It was during her time here she was noticed by Meridian Television'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.
Garraway has also made numerous television appearances on shows such as Loose Women, Have I Got News For You and The Wright Stuff, and also recently presented Beef Encounter for Channel 4 with Jon Snow – a current affairs special on the B.S.E. enquiry.
The presenter lives in Oxfordshire; her activities include scuba diving, bodyboarding, playing the clarinet, and movie-going. She is a Gillingham F.C. football fan. In July 2005, she announced on GMTV that she was engaged to psychotherapist Derek Draper whom she married later in the year. Draper is the former political aide to Peter Mandelson. The couple celebrated the birth of their first child, a baby girl, Darcey, on March 10, 2006.
Garraway is also reported to have been an inspiration for Renée Zellweger's performance in the movie version of Bridget Jones' Diary.