DOWNING STREET GURU ALASTAIR CAMPBELL SPEAKS EXCLUSIVELY TO TV3

TV3 GROUP RELEASE
IMMEDIATE: Wednesday 11th August 2010 

Top Downing Street spin doctor Alastair Campbell has told TV3 about his battles with drink and depression, his relationships with his family and Tony Blair and how he began his journalistic career by writing porn for an adult magazine

In a wide-ranging interview with Ursula Halligan for the This is… series, Campbell describes how he was arrested “for his own safety” as he followed Labour leader Neil Kinnock in Scotland for a newspaper feature. “Effectively I had what you’d call a psychotic breakdown…my mind cracked… At one point I thought I was going to die. I was irrational. I wasn’t going to die - but I thought I was!” Campbell was arrested by special branch who were concerned he might be a threat both to himself and Mr. Kinnock.

He was locked up suffering from delusions and at various points he took off all his clothes and started writing on the walls of his police cell. Campbell was eventually released after he agreed to be admitted to hospital for treatment. He admits that the culture of Fleet Street led to his battle with drink and his eventual breakdown. He describes some of his worst experiences in hospital as “hearing music, voices and hundreds of conversations taking place all at once.”

Even though during his hospital stay, he wrote on a piece of paper “I am an alcoholic”, he now says he would not describe himself as an alcoholic but concedes he had a serious drink problem. Although he has hardly taken a drink for 13 to 14 years now, he confesses to an occasional drink: “I think I test myself… quite dangerous!”

Campbell tells TV3 that his own concerns about his breakdown arose when Tony Blair asked him to become his Press Secretary after becoming Leader of the Opposition. “He said: ‘’I’m not worried if you’re not worried.’’ I said: ‘What if I’m worried, he said: ‘I’m still not worried…He’d made the judgment I was the right guy for him at the time and I think I was.” The two men bonded very quickly, saying he was immediately impressed. I thought: “This guy is bold, this guy has big plans and this is going to be interesting”

Campbell says the one criticism of Blair that jars the most is the idea that Blair as British Prime Minister would have made major foreign policy decisions like the war in Iraq based on what another country wanted. He points to the peace process in Northern Ireland as one of Blair’s major successes but criticises the culture of negativity in Britain for failing to recognise that achievement.

Campbell said he is still very close to Blair despite some of the difficult times they experienced together. He also talks openly about the effect of working with Blair on his marriage and family life, and how he never does housework. At one stage his partner Fiona Millar threw a plate at him in frustration. “It narrowly missed… I forgive!”

Campbell speaks at his frankest about his “start” in journalism when he was working as an English assistant at a school in the south of France during his student years. “I had a friend who was also an English assistant… We had a bet with a friend about who could get into print first and he wrote about cycling and I wrote about sex.”

Campbell contacted various well known soft porn magazines before getting a deal with Forum. He concedes the material was pornographic and admits with a smile: “Partly I was writing from experience but there was quite a lot of imagination in there as well.”

On his own sexual experiences he says: “I was quite a late starter but once I got started I was quite into it…Put it this way by the time I was footloose and fancy free and wandering around Europe, I was quite busy. I’ll say no more than that!”

ENDS.

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Maureen Catterson
TV3 PRESS OFFICE
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Maureen.catterson@tv3.ie
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