9 months
2 weeks ago
I like Alastair Campbell. I know many people don’t, holding him responsible, among other things, for the moronification of British political discourse, but I think he’s charismatic and interesting, I admire the work he does raising money for cancer charities and his openness about his depression, and his work ethic is impressive.
Still, this is Cheltenham, not the most Labour of towns, and 2009, when New Labour is about as fashionable as Michael Bolton, and the main reason I went to see him speak in the Town Hall was to see if he’d get pelted with eggs. He wasn’t. But the questions from the audience suggested a healthy level of scepticism: ‘Did you get addicted to life in power?’; ‘Do you recognise yourself as spin doctor?’; ‘Does “call me dave” Cameron have better spin doctors than Gordon Brown?’; ‘Did you undermine the Civil Service in your time as Tony Blair’s spokesman?’; ‘Has the media succumb to Cameron’s media hype?’. And, of course the obligatory question about how Campbell felt about Burnley, his beloved football team, being promoted.
His responses to these questions were, respectively: ‘No, I was never seduced by the trappings of power’; ‘no’; ‘David Cameron says he is Tony Blair’s successor, but the truth is that he is my successor: he’s all about image and positioning, whereas Tony Blair was good at decision-making and strategy and political change in a way he isn’t’; ‘no’; ‘yes, nick Robinson, the other day referred to Cameron as PM — there hasn’t even been an election yet’; and ‘delighted’.
When it came to being interviewed by broadcaster Kirsty Lang, the two themes Campbell concentrated on were mental illness and novel-writing. On the former he was, as ever, frank and brave, admitting to suffering from a major physical and mental collapse after leaving Downing Street. ‘I noticed the gaps between the depressions were getting shorter and for the first time I saw a psychoanalyst for a sustained time. I now realise the depressions are as much a part of me as hairs on my leg, and when I was transcribing my Downing Street diaries I was surprised by how many of my moods could have been depressive without me or those around me realising it.’
On the theme of writing, however, he was annoying, if only because he seems to find it easy and enjoyable, and I wish I did. ‘The idea for the first novel, All in the Mind, just came to me,’ he said, adding that he didn’t tell anyone he writing it until he’d done a draft and confessing he was afflicted by a kind of ‘demonic energy’. ‘In all it took about seven months to finish. And of all the things I’ve done since Downing Street this has been the thing I’ve enjoyed most. I guess it’s because as a novelist you can control everything!’
Needless to say, the second novel is finished. ‘It’s about a female filmstar and her relationship with a boy she went to school with.’ A pause. ‘It’s about how lives change as a result of fame, the trauma of fame.’ Based on someone he knows? ‘Well, all I can say is that she’s British, and she has dark hair. And I’m very proud of the fact that I sort of designed the cover. It’s a hazy picture of a very beautiful person.’
He may have given up spin doctoring, but it seems Campbell still can’t resist dabbling in a bit of image-making.
Sathnam Sanghera is one of our three writers in residence at this year’s festival. Catch up with Sathnam Sanghera, Kapka Kassabova and Vesna Maric in event 282 on Sunday 18 October.
Sathnam’s latest book is The Boy with the Topknot published by Penguin.
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We’ve tagged this post with literature, review, writers in residence on Tuesday 13 October 2009.
