At the end of last month, readers of the London Evening Standard were treated to a portrait of a tough, controversial but caring public figure, unjustly pitched into the media tempest but emerging calmer, stronger and freer to spend “loads more time” with the family, pick up his son from school and raise “quite a lot” of money for charity. “I suppose I just wanted to put something back in,” said Alastair Campbell, for it was he. “When my parents die, as long as they think I was a good son, as long as Fiona and the kids, when I die, think, oh he was good to have around . . . well, then I don’t care about anything else. I really don’t. Nothing else bothers me.”
Campbell’s mother, I’m sure, will always love him. It’s the rest of us he’s worried about. The week before the Standard piece, readers of the Times Saturday magazine were faced with a 2,000-word feature (this one written by Campbell himself) describing his A-list lunch at the Wolseley with Mel Brooks, Alan Yentob and the literary super-agent Ed Victor, complete with a picture of them sharing a power laugh in an alpha-male kinda way.
Content from our partners
