Alastair Campbell

22/02/2010

‘Oh God… I’m back in this bloody media bubble’. The spin king reveals his fear and loathing of the feral beast...

by Adam Forrest

Alastair Campbell would appear to have a problem with the media. He understands the “bubble” better than almost anyone, having spent much of his professional life either trying to shape – or being shaped by – an increasingly ravenous, hostile news agenda. He knows all the angles but is caught, nevertheless, in an unforgiving glare. For a self-confessed control freak, it is little wonder the nature of the to-and-fro should be so fraught.

The former communication director admits to once being “obsessed with every headline, every bulletin, every statement made by anyone in Labour ranks”. Once a political correspondent on the Daily Mirror, the former journalist has become one of the British media’s most fervent and astute critics. His 2008 Cudlipp Lecture – which fumes against overhyped, negative reporting, the endless, mindless coverage of celebrity gossip and the inanity of text-message feedback – is worth reading in full online.

Tony Blair once famously described the news media as a “feral beast… at points, it literally overwhelms”. Try as Campbell might to redefine his place in the public realm since stepping away from frontline politics, the beast keeps on growling, hungry for more.

In last week’s interview with the BBC’s Andrew Marr, questions about his performance at the Iraq inquiry and his part in presenting the “dodgy” intelligence dossier left Campbell uncharacteristically lost for words – fighting back tears or the kind of temper tantrum that once saw him banging fists on Jon Snow’s Channel 4 news desk. Talking the day after the broadcast, Campbell rolls between phlegmatic good humour and renewed exasperation.

“I turned on the radio this morning to get the headlines, and it was – ‘Today’s phone-in: do you have any sympathy for Alastair Campbell?’” He groans. “You listen to these people who take the trouble to send in texts saying ‘I hate him’ or ‘I like him’ or he’s this or that. You listen to people and you think, ‘They don’t really know you at all’.”

What brought on his “unplanned moment” with Andrew Marr? “Having been through the Chilcot inquiry, it was obviously quite stressful, but I think I did fine. Then you unwind a bit, and even though I was there out of choice to talk about my novel, I had the feeling – oh God, I’m back in this bloody media bubble again.

“I had this feeling that’s there’s nothing I can say that’s remotely going to persuade Andrew Marr. It’s almost become a dialogue of the deaf. You answer the questions but they keep on coming. In a bizarre sort of way, they’ve never really let go,” he laughs. “I find it very, very puzzling. I know it sounds strange – I’m out trying to plug a novel – but I find it quite puzzling why the media appear to be as interested in me as they are. I just think… what’s it all about?”

His new novel Maya is revealing in all sorts of ways, containing conflicting fantasies about controlling fame and escaping the spotlight. His narrator-protagonist Steve is a childhood friend of Maya, an impossibly beautiful, talented London film actress. He is a man who becomes increasingly infatuated the more successful he becomes in manipulating her love life and career.

Mischievous reviewers have noted parallels to Campbell’s impassioned protection of Blair. “It never crossed my mind people would think it could be about Tony and me,” he says. “Whether that’s naïve, I dunno. It’s hard to tell where stuff comes from.”

More apposite perhaps are the reminders of Princess Diana and her struggle to make sense of such an exalted position. “Diana was certainly someone who I think had an ambivalent attitude to fame and media and was maybe more manipulative than Maya,” he notes. “Not sure whether I had her in mind but if you read my diaries, she certainly made a big impression.”

Campbell’s diaries also reveal his own vulnerability to the pressure of constant scrutiny. Could Maya embody his own desire for liberation from the spotlight? “I think there might be a bit of that,” he concedes. “The basic impulse for the book was being out with my daughter. We were in a restaurant and she was getting fed up with people looking at us. So the impulse was creating a character who is well-known and who suddenly decides to stop being well-known. That must partly be about me, I think. There must be bits and pieces of me [in the book].”

Just about all of Campbell’s characters rail against the incessant media merry-go-round, even as they become morally compromised by joining the ride. As a dissection of the soul-corrupting frenzy surrounding the very famous, Maya is as insightful as anything in contemporary fiction.

Even the lowly consumers of celebrity get it in the neck. “These poor fuckers,” rants Maya’s showbiz agent. “They’ve lost faith in God, Queen and country, so they pour it into their illusions.”

How much does the former media manager keep up with tabloid culture? “I never read the mags,” he insists. “I’m aware of the reality shows – and Simon Cowell and how significant he is in the music and TV world – but I don’t watch them. I do have a bit of a thing about the whole celebrity culture and how much time we spend talking about it. You do hear a lot of young kids now saying, ‘I just want to be famous’.”

Campbell is particularly pleased that a long passage transcribing Sky News coverage of Maya’s split from her husband, which sees a report on Robert Mugabe’s finances interrupted for hours of indulgent speculation, was deemed “spot on” by one of the network’s producers, who he knows. “If they have to cover serious stuff, policy debates, if there’s nothing else happening, then they will, but they sure as hell prefer it if a John Terry situation comes along,” he scoffs.


Describing himself as “tribal Labour” Campbell is far from a powerless, acted-upon figure in the media game, of course. His blog is among the centre-left’s most widely read, and he continues to advise Gordon Brown on an informal basis.

“I’ll support him 100 per cent,” he says. “As is well documented, there were times it’s been difficult between Tony and Gordon, and I’ve had my differences with Gordon, but I do think he has phenomenal strength. I think he believes the right things about what should happen for Britain. When he talks about equality of opportunity – that’s what he really believes.”

But after 13 years of a Labour government, will enough people be willing to listen? “The press is basically bored – they want a bit of a change,” he sighs. “If it’s bad for Labour it’s a story; if it’s bad for the Tories it’s not. People say to me, ‘Tony Blair’s only legacy is Iraq’. But I find you actually can get people to listen to all the other things – Northern Ireland, minimum wage, investment in schools and hospitals, family tax credits, independence of The Bank of England – you can go on and on. I think things are turning. Gordon appears to have made the right calls at times David Cameron didn’t, and maybe people are starting to realise that.”

However much Campbell may crave the Westminster world of inquiries and interviews and idle speculation to stop spinning, it seems the old battles and allegiances will keep pushing him back toward the treadmill.

Maya, by Alastair Campbell (Hutchinson, £18.99) is out now