The Mirror and the Telegraph this morning have stories about the financial difficulties of Derek and Kate Draper. The family car was crushed for non-payment of vehicle taxes, and it transpires that Kate (the major breadwinner in the family) was taken to court and had to remortgage the family home in order to pay £173,000 in back taxes. Guido has been aware for some time of Derek’s financial problems – he left debts behind him in the U.S. and his lack of accepted qualifications has made it difficult for him to get NHS patients. The video business he set up to exploit the wife’s celebrity is not a huge success. Draper supplements his income by writing pop-psychology pieces for the tabloids and his own brand of “insider” political analysis for the Guardian – remember his warning to “Get Ready for a Short, Sharp Campaign“ in September 2007? Clearly there is only limited money in his journalism because he has been reduced to doing deals selling pictures of his kids to the downmarket OK celebrity magazine run by pornographer Dirty Desmond.

What many people won’t know from today’s tabloid revelations is that Derek has borrowed heavily from (some now former) friends, political figures and even journalists, some of whom have confirmed to Guido that he has borrowed thousands off them – and they have had great difficulty and embarrassment in getting their money back, sometimes for years. Now he is apparently once again passing round the begging hat to raise money for LabourList, claiming the endorsement of Peter Mandelson for the website. Perhaps he can call on Mandelson’s blind trust to help him out?

UPDATE 20.00 : Derek says the above is a pack of lies and libelous. Which is what he said about the “not at Berkeley in Berkeley” story. He is threatening to sue, again. He won’t. Again. Same old Derek, same old spin.

UPDATE 21.00 : “I have excellent qualifications as a psychotherapist including an MA in psychology and another MA which I am about to receive from a very distinguished UK institution.” If, and Guido means if, you already have an “excellent” MA in psychology, why do you need another?

Matthew Parris this morning says real men don’t Twitter, quite right, but that old faker Draper does, and his suspension from Twitter is getting loads of play around the blogosphere and on Twitter. Yesterday Guido went to some trouble to find out what really happened, twice putting it to Draper that his account was suspended and twice he avoided answering the question. Draper is not stricly denying his account was suspended, he is just arguing with everyone about it, with Clintonesque evasions, basically saying if he was suspended, he isn’t now.

Guido also called a source close to Twitter HQ in San Francisco. They confirmed that Draper’s account was suspended for abuse of the terms of service as reported. Draper pleaded with them for it to be restored in a “Do you know who I am?” way. They didn’t, nor did they care. They restored it anyway.

Dolly was suspended for spamming; James Graham says he has had mulitple Twitter spam follow/unfollows from Derek, which only ended when he finally followed Draper. Yet, despite this being widely attested to, Draper denies spamming people.

Derek is such a spinner, at no time has he admitted being suspended, nor has he mentioned that he begged Twitter to unsuspend his account. Guido has put the facts to him today. He has not as yet responded.

Speak of the devil and his bad ways and POW!! the Twitter sysops suspend his account (see twitter.com/derekdraper) for breaches of the of the terms of service:

Don’t quite know why traffic was so high in February, which was a short month without that much excitement.

The most popular stories were

• Letter to Miliband*
• Dearest Derek
• Draper : I Didn’t Go To Berkeley

MSM types keep telling Guido that Draper is “not an important story” / “a nobody” / “leave it, he ain’t worth it”. The fact is, that combined with the dancing tabloid celeb missus, he is in reality great box office and will be a comedy gift that just keeps on giving. He is Old School New Labour spin and hectoring bullying personified, if his mentor Mandelson is the Harrods of spin (thinks itself grand, actually tacky and glitzy) then Draper is the Morrisons (Northern, cheap and scruffy). In any event the readers lap it up in a “can’t stand him, what is he up to now” kind of way. Tim Montgomerie, gentlemen that is is, thinks Draper should be given a fair bat. Guido on the other hand thinks a baseball bat would be the right tool.

Where is the overdue comment system change you ask? Moderation is an absolute bore, but the transfer of hundreds of thousands of comments from Google’s blogger is proving difficult, also the new comment system is not up to scratch. In the face of Dollybots and window lickers what is Guido to do? Guido wants the new system more than anyone.

Over one hundred and forty Labour MPs have signed a motion opposing goverment plans to part-privatise the Post Office, three Cabinet ministers are known to be opposed, former cabinet ministers like the disgraced Peter Hain are campaigning against the plan and even lowly SpAds are threatening to quit carrying bags. The government could lose the Commons vote without the support of Tory MPs. Unions are threatening to defund the party over the issue. Dramatic stuff. Guido went where “Labour minded people come together” – LabourList – to shed light on the internal debate. Silence.

Total silence on the subject. Caught between the need to placate union sponsors and the demands of those who pull his strings in Downing Street, Draper has had as his lead story all day since yesterday morning a review of Chris Mullin’s book A View From The Foothills. Tragic.

Guido will keep today’s update short:

The National Organisation of Labour Students’ Philip Honour, a campaigner and listed contributor to Draperlist, wrote on Dolly’s Wikipedia entry that “A rumor that Derek has been asked to handover control of Labourlist by influential Labour party insiders is yet to be confirmed.” Guido understands that it was in fact Dougie Alexander who had a frank exchange of words with Derek.

Mencap accept Draper’s apology (as reported in the Indy this morning) over “Window-Licker” abuse and consider the matter closed. On the other hand MIND, the mental health charity which (as reported by this evening’s London Standard) made Derek “Mental health Journalist of the Year 2007″, would rather not comment – even through gritted teeth. Draper’s press handling as skilful as ever.

Guido keeps calling and emailing his alma mater the Wright Institute (in Berkeley, not at Berkeley). Unfortunately, it seems to be just an answerphone at the other end…

And finally: after last night’s premiere of Draper’s Downfall, some unkind Labour wags are calling DraperList the “Volks Blog”. Derek himself Twitters that he is appalled, embarrassed and flattered by the parody. So one more time with the flattery:

Ever the contrarian, it falls to Guido to defend poor Derek, the pressure must be getting to him, universally criticised even by his own readership.

How else do you explain that after getting a little bit of criticism from some of his readers on his DraperList blog, he abused them as “Window Lickers”. Which is something Guido too has done in exasperation with some of the loonies who leave comments on this blog. The fact is that any high traffic site attracts a fair number of nutters, and unfortunately they are far more likely to leave comments than ordinary readers. Derek has now made amends and given two full apologies, both on DraperList and his own personal blog.

Guido usually has to retro-moderate comments, deleting those he deems over-the-top or are pointed out to him as such, after they are published. Fortunately for Derek he has a £20,000-a-year assistant (paid for by the Unite union) to filter out the bad comments for him. Unfortunately they couldn’t stop Draper leaving offensive derogatory comments and saving him from himself.

Just before Christmas Guido wrote a long piece reflecting on the problem of the “Economics of Blog Comments“. Derek must have read it – it was in that piece that Guido referred to some of his comment makers as “window-lickers”. Worth re-reading Derek.
Still perhaps having learnt another lesson, he will show a bit more humility on this subject now. Or maybe not…

UPDATE : It is a rite of passage and a tradition in the blogosphere to do a mash-up of Downfall at important moments. Laugh out loud at Draper’s Downfall. It is priceless.

Tribune’s Rene Lavanchy reports back from yesterday’s official press launch of DraperList, where Draper lost the plot shouting at the Guardian’s David Hencke

“Justify the headline in that fucking story! Go and change it before you become the laughing stock of the lobby!… Doing Guido Fawkes’ dirty work…”

In the Independent this morning the headline is

Sparks Fly as Draper Meets his Tormentor
By Henry Deedes

Derek Draper yesterday became embroiled in the sort of fracas Westminster hasn’t seen for many a year. The editor of the much-vaunted DraperList website was hosting a “Bloggers Breakfast”, an event aimed at discussing Labour’s internet strategy attended by Peter Mandelson. Proceedings were civil until The Guardian’s political journalist David Hencke entered the fray.

“Draper squared up to him, jabbing his finger, insisting he’d end Hencke’s career,” says an onlooker. “It was quite nasty.” The row was about a Hencke piece accusing Draper of “spinning” his qualification to imply that he had obtained an MA in clinical psychology at the world-renowned Berkeley branch of the University of California. Draper went to the Wright Institute in Berkeley.

Draper, a qualified psychotherapist, rebuffs the claim. “People can say what they like about my politics but if they question my professional reputation it is more serious,” he said. “It made me angry and I didn’t have a problem with showing it.”

One account says that Draper had to be restrained by a horrified Labour press officer. Now what was it that Draper told that blogger’s fringe meeting at the Labour Party conference last year? The quote was:

“If you want to be a superstar blogger and get the headlines yet lose Labour the election, you can just f**k off.“

Psycho-therapist heal thy self.

Guido has more bad news for Derek – Guido has more evidence coming that Draper has misled people as to the source of his qualifications. Come on Derek, serve that writ or “you can just f**k off.“

David Hencke has got Draper to admit that contrary to the impression he gave him for a recent Guardian profile, his qualification comes not from the world famous Berkeley, but from a small private institution called the Wright Institute in California.

According to the report

Unlike Berkeley, the privately owned Wright Institute, according to its website, does not offer full-time degrees. Instead it is aimed at graduates who want most of the week off for other activities. It says: “Our new masters’ programme is designed for students who want a high-quality graduate education and prefer to attend classes on weekends only.”

This course is remarkably good value by American standards, for just $6,525 you too can get a masters…

UPDATE : Draper says this morning that he didn’t go on this particular course, his course was full time. He says he never said he studied at Berkeley, University of California, he said he went to Berkeley, California. To study. Different you see. Yet on his professional website it mentions nowhere that he studied at the Wright Institute, just “Berkeley, California”. It is all the Guardian’s fault and he is going to sue. Stop digging Derek. You will be laughed out of court.

Derek Draper boasts of having an M.A. in Clinical Psychology, Guido wondered if his education could perhaps be applied usefully to the occupant of No. 10, Downing Street. So Guido thought it would be a bit of a laugh to track down Derek’s Master’s dissertation and see if it had any pearls of wisdom that could be applied to the state of mind of the Prime Mentalist.

A quick bit of Google research brought up a recent profile (July) and biography in the Guardian written by David Hencke. In the largely sympathetic article we learnt that Derek is a reformed character and no longer the legendary unsavoury spinner. Even a bitter old foe like Roy Hattersley has been won round:

He is Like a Character in a novel. There is always a whiff of danger because you don’t know what he is going to do next

The spin doctor turned psychotherapist has returned to the Labour fold … Hattersley, who recently lunched with Draper, says: “I believe he is now a changed man. He’s got older, is more measured. I don’t whether it is because he is now a psychotherapist or his marriage but he has changed. He will be an asset to the party.”

Born August 15 1967 in Chorley, Lancashire

Education Southlands high school, Chorley; University of Manchester, economics; University of California, Berkeley, MA in clinical psychology

Family Married to GMTV presenter Kate Garraway. One daughter

Career 1990-92, constituency secretary to Nick Brown; 92-96, researcher for Peter Mandelson; 96-99, director of lobbying firm GPC Market Access. Briefly a columnist for the Express and presenter on Talk Radio; Currently a psychotherapist with a practice in London.

Having now discovered where he got his qualifications Guido contacted the registrar of the prestigious Berkeley campus at the University of California to track down the dissertation. He, and the academic librarian, were unsuccessful in finding the dissertation. Strangely the registrar could find no actual record of a student called Derek Draper:

Because the information you provided did not match any records in our database, we asked the school to research your request. The school was unable to locate either a degree or enrollment record for the subject of your verification request.

Nothing. Derek Draper never studied psychology at Berkeley, University of California. His professional practice website implies he did, though if you read it carefully it says “in” rather than “at”.

Like all good “celebs” Draper has an agent, the CV he sends out to potential bookers says, you guessed it; Berkeley, California. The truth is that a leopard can’t change its spots, he learnt how to spin from Mandelson, like his master he can’t help himself. Derek Draper wants to be Labour’s answer to Iain Dale, instead he seems more like Labour’s version of Jeffrey Archer. A fantasist who exaggerates himself for his own psychological reasons.