Derek Draper was my therapist – he saved my life

My friend Mitch says that most obituaries aren’t so much as “the person that I knew” as “the person that knew me”. This is especially true about writing about my experiences with Derek Draper, as although he was a man who made a tremendous impression on my life, and we spent a lot of pretty intense time together, I didn’t know him personally at all – he was my psychotherapist.

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About 20 years ago, having suffered from depression for a long time, I decided to finally go into therapy. “It’s talking to someone who cares, but isn’t involved,” explained a friend who’d been, and that is a perfect description. My first experience of therapy was with an organisation who trained therapists, and it was a great one. After an initial wariness, I didn’t have much hesitation in opening up; after all, what do you get from the experience if you hold things back?

I felt I moved on and dealt with a lot of things and felt a lot less angry; so much so that when I had my pocket picked on the bus and my phone stolen on the way home after a session, I was fairly chilled about it. A few years later, I thought I needed to have more therapy as I’d lost my way again. I’d heard about so many terrible practicioners, including friends who’d seen so-called “professionals” who got a tray of “healing” crystals out at the end of the session; or asked “do you mind if I eat my lunch whilst we talk?”.

This was at the time when Draper had returned to the UK after studying psychology in California after being exposed in the 1998 “Lobbygate” affair, when it was alleged that he had offered access to government ministers in exchange for payment. He’d set up a psychotherapy practice in London, and I’d read pieces he’d written about it. So why did I choose him?

I’d had a lot of supposedly glamorous jobs in the past, working on high-profile celebrity magazines and newspapers, interviewing celebrities and going to events where I got to go beyond the velvet rope. From the outside, it all looked rather nice, but it was a largely shallow, empty experience which consumed my life. In a way, it was helpful, because I felt utterly lonely amidst all this alleged fabulousness.

I thought that Derek might be able to help me. After a high-profile public humiliation after a high-profile political career and suffering crippling depression himself, I thought he might be able to understand someone else whose life looked wonderful from the outside – but was still dreadful. It was a bit of a leap of faith financially, too – his prices as a private practitioner in a West End office weren’t exactly at the lower end, and those “glamour” jobs I had didn’t pay particularly well.

Yet, I trotted off after work every week to Derek’s therapy office close to Regent Street and we’d sit in the large, white room in armchairs diagonally opposite from each other. We were a long way apart; it seemed odd after seeing trainees in a little room in Highbury. It also seemed odd that I already knew more about him than he did about me; something rather unusual in the usual  therapist/client relationship. But once I got the vision of my therapist hanging out with Peter Mandelson out of my mind, the real work began.

Derek Draper was not the kind of smooth therapist from TV dramas or Woody Allen movies. With his Mancunian accent, non-designer wardrobe of sensible jumpers and slightly-too-short trousers, sitting in his office with glaringly white overhead lights, this was not a swish experience. But who needs gloss when the therapy you get is genuinely empathetic and useful? Of course, we were never going to be best friends, but I certainly thought that we liked each other.

He sensitively drew answers from me. One moment I’ll never forget is when we had a conversation about my parents’ similarity to Alan Bennett’s in the way they thought certain things – like cocktails and hotels – weren’t for the likes of them. And the way we talked about my love life and he said: “It’s been very disappointing for you, hasn’t it?”, and off we went. It was good to hear that pain acknowledged.

When he moved to a cosier office across the corridor from his first one, I noticed a painting of a paradise beach, painted in very dark colours, on the wall opposite me. I described it as “crap”, then remembered reading that Draper had painted that very work when he was suffering from severe depression. I apologised, he smiled, and we moved on.

People have said to me that to see him as a therapist, I must have been mad, but I can only say that seeing Derek Draper was one of the best things I ever did for myself. And it worked – though not in the way you might think. I’d love to be able to tell you that I am now holding down an incredibly well-paid job while living in a big house with my partner, but none of that is true.

But therapy isn’t like that. It teaches you to live with what you have, by giving you a toolkit to deal with whatever rubbish life throws at you – and Derek Draper was very good at that, despite what people may have thought of him in other areas of his life.

He did a lot of good things for his therapy clients, and even though I haven’t seen him professionally for years, I would have loved to have gone back for a few top-up sessions.

Too late now. Rest well, Mr Draper; a great psychotherapist (but not very good artist).