Blair’s spin doctor ‘arrested for my own safety’ after psychotic breakdown
Advertisement Alastair Campbell, former director of communications for Tony Blair, and now a writer, strategist, mental health advocate and co-host of hit podcast The Rest is Politics, is hopeful about the future despite current pervading gloom.
“I was at an AI event last night where the guy in charge of it, who works in AI, told us his 16-year-old daughter had said to him, ‘If you don’t get a fully electric car and you don’t stop using ChatGPT the whole time, I’m not talking to you.’ I think kids have got a better take on the world than we give them credit for. They get it.”
Alistair Campbell, Tony Blair’s former press secretary, will host a series of events in Australia in November. Carsten Windhorst & Gerard Hynes Worst habit? Swearing when it’s not entirely necessary. Malcolm Tucker, the Scottish Downing Street spin doctor [from BBC satire The Thick of It ] who was allegedly based on me, took swearing to a level of art that is beauty. But I do it when there’s no need.
Fiona, my partner, dying before me. I couldn’t cope practically or emotionally. We’ve been together almost 50 years and had many ups and downs. A lot of women would not have put up with me, my life, my brain, my addictions. People think I’m competent and get stuff done. But if you were to ask me how to get into my bank account or how to book a holiday or how to change a plug, I am utterly useless. Fiona does absolutely everything. The fear is a mix of love, of loss and also a practicality.
Tony Blair (left) and Campbell in 1997, ahead of the election that unseated Conservative prime minister John Major. Getty Images The line that stayed with you? In 1975, when I went to university, my dad gave me a fiver and a little piece of paper. He said, “Just read that and keep it.” It was this quote from Hamlet: “This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.” Always stuck with me.
I was abroad when my mum died. She died suddenly. I spoke to her the day before but I never got to see her. Afterwards, my sister was sorting through Mum’s papers and came across a short poem she had left to be read at the funeral and put on the back of the order of service. The poem said, “Farewell my family. My life is past. I loved you all to the very last. Weep not for me but courage take. Love each other for my sake. For those you love don’t go away. They walk beside you every day.” (The poem, often attributed to Francis Day, is regularly used in funeral services.) I think about it all the time.
Without a doubt, in 1986 when I had a psychotic breakdown. I was news editor at a newspaper called Today . I was with Neil Kinnock, leader of the Labor Party, in Scotland, and I just started to feel really strange. I was seeing things, hearing things. I ended up being arrested for my own safety and then taken to hospital and basically told to stop drinking and to get a grip. My career crashed and I had to rebuild.
We thought the issue was alcoholism. It’s actually an addictive personality and the depression which I used to hide with drink and work. Dealing with the depression is something I do all the time. Medication, but also this [Campbell holds up an empty jam jar]. This was given to me by a psychiatrist. Sediment down here, that’s your genes. The rest is your life, the experiences that mix in and out. Usually we just about cope. When we don’t, it’s because there’s too much going on in here. You explode. That’s when you’re ill. The psychiatrist said, “You can’t undo anything inside the jam jar, you have to build on the jam jar”. So I build on it with relationships, meaningful activity, sleep, diet, exercise, music, creativity, curiosity and medication and psychiatry at the top. Before, it would have been medication first. I always keep the jar on my desk.
Two songs from Belgian singer Jacques Brel; Ne me quitte pas and Quand on n’a que l’amour . I was a busker in my uni days and I was hitchhiking from Aix-en-Provence to Nice. I got a ride with this Belgian lorry driver. As we were driving, there’s a news flash. Jacques Brel is dead. This big, hairy-ass, tattooed, beer-gutted lorry driver starts crying. Then the radio played Jacques Brel songs and the lorry driver explained their story and meaning.
Forward to a world where Trump and Musk are gone and the tech bros are bus drivers. A lot of very rich, powerful people get so above themselves they don’t realise how lucky they are. They can’t envisage that in another life they could have ended up being the street cleaner. I could be completely wrong; they might end up saving humanity. But I’m far from convinced.
An Evening With Alastair Campbell is at Sydney State Theatre on Nov 19 and Melbourne Recital Centre on Nov 22. Tickets: fane.com.au
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