Alastair John Campbell (born 25 May 1957) is a British journalist, broadcaster, political aide and author, best known for his work as Director of Communications and Strategy for
Prime Minister Tony Blair between 1997 and 2003. Campbell describes himself as a "Communicator, Writer and Strategist" on his website, while others have described him as Labour's "unelected, but ... hardly underscrutinised"
spin doctor.
Alastair John Campbell was born on 25 May 1957 in Yorkshire, son of a
Scottish veterinary surgeon, Donald Campbell, and his wife Elizabeth. Campbell's parents had moved to
Keighley when his 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. Even though Alastair was born in Yorkshire, he would go over the county border to Lancashire to watch
Burnley Football Club with his father, Donald.
He attended City of Leicester Boys' Grammar 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, with whom he has three children, two sons (born November 1987 and July 1989) and a daughter (born May 1993). Campbell is an atheist.
Campbell moved to the London office of the ''
Daily Mirror'' in 1982, England's sole remaining big-circulation supporter of the
Labour Party. He became a political correspondent before moving to The ''
Today'' newspaper in 1986, a full-colour tabloid newspaper which was now trying to turn leftward where he worked as a news editor. His rapid rise and its accompanying stress led to alcohol abuse.
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 onwards 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.
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'' in 1994, Campbell became political editor of ''Today''. 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.
Shortly after Blair won and became leader of the Labour Party in 1994, Campbell left ''Today'' 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 also worked hard to win support from the national media for the Labour Party, particularly from the newspapers who for many years had been anti-Labour. By March 1997, many of the leading newspapers – including ''
The Sun'', once a staunch
Thatcherite paper – had declared their support for Labour.
He moved into government when Labour won the general election in May 1997 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.
In the runup to the
Iraq War Campbell was involved in the preparation and release of the "
September Dossier" in September 2002 and the "
Iraq Dossier" in February 2003. These documents argued the case for concern over possible
weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq. Both have been criticized as overstating or distorting the actual intelligence findings. Subsequent investigation revealed that the September Dossier had been altered, on Campbell's orders, to be consistent with a speech given by
George W. Bush and statements by other United States officials. On 9 September 2002, Campbell sent a memo to
John Scarlett, the chairman of the
Joint Intelligence Committee, in which Campbell directed that the British dossier be "one that complements rather than conflicts with" the U.S. claims.
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. (Kelly's view that the government grossly exaggerated the Iraqi threat in the notorious 'dodgy dossier', told to BBC journalists Andrew Gilligan and Susan Watts, had led to Campbell battling with the BBC. "The government was determined to use Dr Kelly in its battle against the BBC, and he and Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon had taken the decision, in Campbell's words, 'to fuck Gilligan'. The counsel for the Kelly family said to Lord Hutton: 'The family invite the inquiry to find that the government made a deliberate decision to use Dr Kelly as a pawn as part of its strategy in its battle with the BBC.')
Campbell gave evidence to the Iraq Inquiry on 12 January 2011.
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, titled ''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 expressed an intention to one day publish the diaries in fuller form, and indicated 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 BBC Two series ''The Speaker'' in April 2009 offering his advice on persuasive speaking. He is a lifelong supporter of Burnley Football Club and writes about their exploits in a column called "Turf Moor Diaries" for the FanHouse UK football blog . He is regularly involved in many different events with Burnley Football Club.
Campbell made his first appearance on the BBC One political discussion programme ''Question Time'' on 27 May 2010. At the opening of the edition, presenter David Dimbleby said that Downing Street would not allow a front bench member of the government to appear on the show unless Campbell was dropped. The BBC refused to do this. The Government later accused the BBC of behaving improperly for allowing Campbell to appear as a more in-depth version of his diaries was due to be published the following week, and a Downing Street spokesman told ''The Guardian'', "Campbell seemed to be on because he's flogging a book next week, so the BBC haven't behaved entirely properly here." Campbell said that he had waited until Labour were in opposition before appearing on the show and that the date was a coincidence as it was the only time he was free. He suggested the discord was part of a Conservative anti-BBC agenda. The Minister who had been scheduled to appear was the then Chief Secretary to the Treasury David Laws who Campbell produced a picture of during the programme. Three days later Laws resigned his post following revelations about possible irregularities in his expenses claims in ''The Telegraph'' the day before.
Campbell appeared on BBC's Top Gear in July 2010 and set a time of 1:47 around the Top Gear Test Track in the Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car segment, setting the second fastest time around the track at that time.
He also took part in the 2011 Channel Four television series Jamie's Dream School.
In 2011, Campbell contacted the Metropolitan Police with suspicions that his phone was hacked by the ''News of the World'' in 2003.
Campbell presented and narrated the 20 February 2012 edition of Panorama, which was entitled ''Britain's Hidden Alcoholics''. In the programme, Campbell stated that he is an alcoholic, although he has not drunk alcohol since 1986.
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 Bazeley in the
Stephen Frears film ''
The Queen'' - a role reprised by Bazeley in 2010 follow-up ''
The Special Relationship'', also written by
Peter Morgan but this time directed by
Richard Loncraine.
Alex Jennings, who portrayed
Prince Charles in ''
The Queen'', portrayed Campbell in the television drama ''A Very Social Secretary''. In an episode of Dead Ringers his close relationship with Tony Blair is satirized in an imaginary scenario where Tony is divorcing his wife. He is asked if it will be difficult to sack the person he most loves and cherishes replying "I'm not sacking Alastair Campbell"
It is also hinted that the character of Malcolm 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.
''
The Blair Years'' (2007).
Random House. ISBN 0-09-951475-3
''
All in the Mind'' (2008). Hutchinson. ISBN 0-09-192578-9
''
Maya'' (2010). Hutchinson. ISBN 0-09-193087-1
Jones, Nicholas (2000). ''Sultans of Spin: The Media and the New Labour Government''. Orion Books. ISBN 0-7528-2769-3.
Oborne, Peter and Simon Walters (2004). ''Alastair Campbell''. Aurum. ISBN 1-84513-001-4
Rawnsley, Andrew (2001). ''Servants of the People: The Inside Story of New Labour''. Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-027850-8.
Seldon, Anthony (2005). ''Blair''. The Free Press. ISBN 0-7432-3212-7.
www.alastaircampbell.org official website
Article archive at ''The Guardian''
Article archive at Journalisted
Profile: Alastair Campbell, ''BBC News'', 29 August 2003
Campbell defiant over Lions role, ''BBC News'', 20 July 2005
Leukaemia Research, the charity Alastair Campbell fundraises for
Category:1957 births
Category:Living people
Category:Alumni of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge
Category:English people of Scottish descent
Category:British newspaper editors
Category:British public relations people
Category:British special advisers
Category:English atheists
Category:Labour Party (UK) officials
Category:People from Leicester
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