GMB's Kate Garraway issues tragic financial update after struggling with crippling debt

Good Morning Britain's Kate Garraway has admitted that she has been forced to dip into her pension in order to pay residual bills following the death of her husband Derek Draper. The mum of two made the sad admission while interiewing a woman who was forced to dip into her pension to pay for a hip operation due to NHS waiting lists.

"I'm doing something similar myself. I've just had to withdraw a bit you can tax free for my pension to pay for belated bills for my husband who passed away.

"People are having to do the things - not that it was a huge pension in the first place - people are having to do things which aren't what they saved for. And some people don't have any savings at all," she pointed out.

Kate's latest financial revelation comes just over a month after she admitted she was in dire financial circumstances following her husband's health issues. Speaking in her most recent documentary Derek's story she confessed that her huge ITV salary didn't cover all the expenses his illness had generated.

Although broadcast after Derek's sad death it was filmed while he was still alve and she opened up on the financial hardship they had endured. "Derek's care costs more than my salary from ITV and that's before you pay for a mortgage, before you pay for any household bills, before you pay for anything for the kids," she explained.

"So we're at a crunch point. I am in debt and I can't earn enough money to cover my debt because I'm managing Derek's care.

"And I can't even use the money I do have to support Derek's recovery because it's going on the basics all the time."

The producer then stepped in and said: "I'm sure viewers would be surprised to hear that because you're on the telly, you must be loaded."

Kate responded: "Listen, I'm not going to pretend that I'm poorly paid, I have an incredible job that I love which is well paid, but it's not enough," she said sadly.

Derek died in January after battling long-Covid for four years and suffering a cardiac arrest at the end of last year.

Explaining his cause of death in Derek's Story Kate said: "Derek had a cardiac arrest, the heart muscles basically had been weakened by covid at the very beginning and they went out of sync and this created a blood clot of massive proportions and that blood clot had now gone on to Derek's brain.

"By the time I got there, they managed to get the heart going and they managed to stabilise him and he was breathing but the clot had caused huge damage. Then relentlessly from there, consultants have just been saying, 'There's no way back'.

"He's still breathing, they think he can hear so I sat down with him, holding his hand, I just said him, 'Look you know me, I'm gonna fight this all the way and if you can't fight anymore and what actually you need now is peace, don't think about us, we're going to be fine.'"

Good Morning Britain is on ITV weekdays at 6am.