- This article is about the British journalist, broadcaster,
political aide, and author; for others see Alistair Campbell
.
Alastair John Campbell (born 25 May 1957) was
Director of Communications and
Strategy for the
British Prime Minister
Tony Blair from 1997 to 2003. He began
working for Blair in 1994.
Early life
Alastair
Campbell was born in Yorkshire, son of a Scottish
veterinary surgeon, Donald Campbell, and
his wife Elizabeth. Campbell's parents had moved to Keighley
when
Campbell's father became a partner in a local veterinary
practice. Donald was a Gaelic-speaker from the island of Tiree
; his wife
was from Ayrshire
.
Campbell has two elder brothers, Donald and Graeme, and a younger
sister, Elizabeth.
He
attended City of Leicester
School and Gonville and Caius College,
Cambridge
, where he studied modern languages, French and German, for which he received an upper
second (2:1). He later claimed he wrote
essays based solely on works of
literary criticism, often rather than
having read the works themselves. He spent a year in the
south of France as part of his
degree course.
Campbell became interested in
journalism.
His first published work was
Inter-City Ditties, his
winning entry to a readers' competition in the
pornographic magazine
Forum. This led to a lengthy stint
writing pieces for the magazine with such titles as
Busking
with Bagpipes and
The Riviera Gigolo, written in a
style calculated to lead readers at the time to believe they were
descriptions of his own sexual exploits.
Campbell became a sports reporter on the
Tavistock Times.
His first
significant contribution to the news pages was coverage of the
Penlee lifeboat
disaster
. As a trainee on the Plymouth-based
Sunday Independent,
then owned by
Mirror Group
Newspapers, he met his partner
Fiona
Millar.
National newspapers
Campbell moved to the London office of the
Daily Mirror, England's sole remaining
big-circulation supporter of the
Labour Party. He became a political
correspondent. His rapid rise and its accompanying stress led to
alcohol abuse.
Alcoholism and depression
Campbell
was admitted to hospital in 1986 when he travelled to Scotland to
cover Neil Kinnock's visit to Glasgow
. He
was detained by the police for his own safety after being observed
behaving oddly. Police contacted his partner and following her
calls to friends in Scotland the police let a family friend take
Campbell to
Ross Hall Hospital, a
private
BMI hospital in Glasgow where
she and her father visited him. Over the next five days as an
inpatient he was given medication to calm him, and he realised that
he had an alcohol problem after seeing the
psychiatrist. Campbell said that from that day
he counted each one that he did not drink alcohol, and did not stop
counting until he had reached thousands.
Campbell
returned to England, preferring to stay with friends near Cheltenham
, rather than return to London (and his partner)
where he did not feel safe. His condition continued with a
phase of
depression, and
he was reluctant to seek further medical help. He eventually
cooperated with treatment from his
family doctor.
Return to work
His first son was born in 1987; and when Campbell returned to the
Daily Mirror, he had to restart at a low grade again and
work nightshifts, but rebuilt his career and became Political
Editor.
He was a close advisor of
Neil Kinnock,
going on holiday with the Kinnocks, and worked closely with
Robert Maxwell. Campbell's loyalty to
Maxwell was demonstrated when he punched
The Guardian journalist
Michael White after White joked
about "Captain Bob, Bob, Bob...bobbing" in the Atlantic Ocean
shortly after Maxwell's drowning in 1991. Campbell later put this
down to stress at the thought of himself and others losing their
job following the demise of the
Daily Mirror
proprietor.
After leaving the
Mirror, Campbell became Political Editor
of
Today, a
full-colour tabloid newspaper which had launched in 1986, but was
now trying to turn leftward. He was working there when
John Smith died in 1994. He was a
well-known face and helped to interview the three candidates for
the new
Labour Party leader; it
was later revealed he had already formed links with
Tony Blair.
Politics and government
Shortly after Blair won and became leader of the Labour Party in
1994, Campbell left the newspaper to become his spokesman. Having
recovered and become teetotal, he told Blair about his illness,
which Blair did not see as a problem. He played an important role
in the run-up to the
1997 general election,
working with
Peter Mandelson to
co-ordinate Labour's campaign.
He moved into government when Labour won the 1997 General Election
and was the Prime Minister's chief press secretary until 2000. He
then moved to the post of Prime Minister's Director of
Communications which gave him a strategic role in overseeing
government communications. He was sponsored by the US President
George W. Bush to complete the London marathon in aid
of a cancer charity,
Leukaemia
Research.
Iraq War
In early 2003 he advised on presentation aspects of the "
Iraq Dossier". Later in 2003, commenting on
WMDs in Iraq he said,
"Come on, you don't seriously think we won't find anything?" He
resigned in August 2003 during the
Hutton
Inquiry into the death of
David Kelly.
Later career
Campbell worked again for the Labour Party in the run-up to the
May 2005 General
Election.
Sir Clive Woodward
recruited Campbell to manage relations with the press for the
British and Irish Lions
tour to
New Zealand in 2005. Campbell wrote a column for
The Times during the tour.
Throughout his time in Downing Street, Campbell kept a diary which
reportedly totalled some two million words. Selected extracts,
entitled
The Blair Years,
were published on 9 July 2007. Subsequent press coverage of the
book's release included coverage of what Campbell had chosen to
leave out, particularly in respect of the relationship between
Blair and his Chancellor and successor, Gordon Brown. Campbell, who
has expressed an intention to one day publish the diaries in fuller
form, indicates in the introduction to the book that he did not
wish to make matters harder for Brown in his new role as Prime
Minister, or to damage the Labour Party.
Campbell has his own website and blog, as well as several pages on
social networking websites. He uses these platforms to discuss
British politics and other topics close to his heart. So far,
Campbell's commentaries and views have garnered media attention and
generated ample interest among various on-line communities. In
October 2008, he broadcast the personal story of his mental illness
in a television documentary partly to reduce the stigma of that
illness. He has written a novel on the subject entitled
All in
the Mind.
Campbell appeared as a mentor in the
BBC2
series
The Speaker in April 2009
offering his advice on persuasive speaking. He is a lifelong
supporter of
Burnley Football
Club.
Stage and screen portrayals
A regular feature of
Bremner, Bird and Fortune is
a satirical version of Campbell's discussions with Tony Blair, in
which
Rory Bremner plays Blair and
Andrew Dunn plays Campbell. In
2005, Campbell was played by
Jonathan
Cake in the
Channel 4 television film
The
Government Inspector, based on the David Kelly Case. The
following year, he was portrayed by
Mark
Beazley in the
Stephen Frears
film
The Queen.
Alex Jennings, who portrayed
Prince Charles in
The Queen, portrayed Campbell in the
television drama
A Very Social Secretary.
It is also hinted that the character of Malcom Tucker from the
BBC political satire comedy
The Thick Of It is loosely based on
Campbell. Tucker is famous for his short fuse and use of very
strong language. Campbell himself seems to have a few qualms about
being associated with the character. In an interview with
Mark Kermode on
BBC2's
The Culture Show, he denied that
the two are similar in any relevant way, but admitted to his
liberal use of profanities in the workplace.
Selected works
References
- Seon C. Caimbeul "Beachdan 'ceannard nan car' mu ar cànain"
The Scotsman 28 July 2007, Retrieved on 30 July 2007
- Oborne,
Peter and Simon Walters (2004). Alastair Campbell.
Aurum. ISBN 1-84513-001-4. pp. 25-32.
- "Cracking Up". BBC
Two television documentary written and presented by Alastair
Campbell. Broadcast Sunday, 12 October 2008.
- Michael White "White vs Campbell", The Guardian, 5
November 2001. Retrieved on 19 July 2997.
- Simon Hoggart "Sooner or later, Campbell was going to lose
it", The Guardian, 26 July 2003. Retrieved on 19 July
2007.
- Nick Assinder "The life and times of Alastair Campbell", BBC News,
29 August 2003. Retrieved on 19 July 2007.
- 'Did I say that', Observer magazine 29 March 2009
- International Movie Database,
Alex
Jennings (I).
- Interview available at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcFaizGw860
Further reading
- Jones, Nicholas (2000). Sultans of Spin: The Media and the
New Labour Government. Orion Books. ISBN 0-75282-769-3.
- Oborne, Peter and Simon Walters
(2004). Alastair Campbell. Aurum. ISBN 1845130014
- Rawnsley, Andrew (2001).
Servants of the People: The Inside Story of New Labour.
Penguin Books. ISBN 0-140-27850-8.
- Seldon, Anthony (2005).
Blair. The Free Press. ISBN 0-7432-3212-7.
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