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July 25th, 2003 On Cherie Blair firing Alastair Campbell’s wife Fiona Millar as her adviser, accusing her of briefing against her. ”I told TB about CB’s call and said that it was unforgivable that she spoke to Fiona like that after all she’d done for her. He said people were too fraught at the moment
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May 9th 1996, on Peter Mandelson’s row with Gordon Brown over political strategy: “They started talking very loudly at each other, just a few decibels short of shouting. TB, who for once was sitting in the chair by the TV…said for heaven’s sake keep this under control. Peter then stood up, said no, I won’t,
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August 10th, 2003 on being told while on holiday in France that the Hutton Inquiry wanted to read his diaries: “I had received the request for my diary on Thursday and now, finally, this year’s was being flown out by Peter Howes [duty clerk]. As I left the house, and said goodbye to Fiona, I
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August 11th, 1994: on Blair telling him about his plans to ditch Clause 4, while trying to persuade Campbell to work as his press secretary: “By now, he had also let me know, and sworn me to secrecy, that he was minded to have a review of the constitution and scrap Clause 4. I have
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January 24th, 2001 on Peter Mandelson’s second resignation, over the Hinduja passports-for-favours affair: “I went back up and TB looked absolutely wretched. Peter looked becalmed. TB said he had made clear to PM he had to go and that though he wasn’t sure, over time he would see why it had been necessary. TB seemed
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Anthony Browne, director of the think-tank Policy Exchange and prior to that the chief political correspondent of The Times, is plucking out the most interesting passages from the just published Alastair Campbell diaries for Coffee House. June 30th 2003 on going for BBC over Andrew Gilligan’s report that he sexed up the “dodgy dossier”: “I
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Marvellous to read James Delingpole on snuff in this week’s issue and the very next day to go out to lunch and encounter two people both enthusiastically snuffling away. They managed to do so quite neatly, without sneezing volcanically into voluminous tobacco-stained handkerchiefs. One of them favoured a slightly mentholated mix, while the other’s was
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Well, Alan Clark he aint. The publication today of Alastair Campbell’s diaries looks set to be a colossal damp squib. I haven’t read the 794-page book, but judging from the extracts he’s posted on his website Campbell’s observations are almost comically uninteresting. Here he is, for example, on meeting the Princess of Wales in 1995:
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Read Matthew d’Ancona’s Live Earth reports: Live from Live Earth, Rocking for the Planet, Gore’s message is confusing, can Geri be clearer?, Let’s save this funny old world, Nan-archy in the UK, The Excellence of Tree Stock, Turning it up to 11 and Nobody does it better.
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Newsweek has a great cover story about Barack Obama that touches on one of the least-talked about, but most interesting issues surrounding his candidacy: the worry among some black leaders and voters that electing a black president could actually be bad for blacks. The argument goes that once an African-American has been elected president, society
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A “gold mine”: that is how the Tories would regard Alastair Campbell’s unexpurgated diaries, according to Campbell himself. In an interview with Andrew Marr, the great spin doctor admitted that his relationship with the press went “horribly wrong” and that Bill Clinton urged him to look in the mirror and ask if that had something
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During Terence Stamp’s summing up speech at Live Earth, I very nearly lost the will to live – a self-defeating performance by the actor, given that the whole point of the concert was to rev up our collective instinct for survival. Five minutes in to Terry’s oration, we were longing for a nearby glacier to
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Sir: What is this ‘Brown bounce?’ There would be no bounce at all if our media had not reverted to their favoured toecap-kissing mode. Brown-nosing Sir: What is this ‘Brown bounce?’ There would be no bounce at all if our media had not reverted to their favoured toecap-kissing mode. When Tony Blair came to office
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There are few sights in Western civilisation to compare with Spinal Tap performing ‘Stonehenge’ and it is at least arguable that the risk of impending apocalypse caused by climate change was worth it to get Nigel, the boys and the dancing dwarves back on stage. Two billion people watching around the world are surely happier
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Teatime has come and gone here at Tree-Stock, and we have yawned our way through tepid sets by Corinne Bailey Rae and the insufferably wimpy Keane. Don’t send a bunch of boys to play a man’s stadium. Thank God for Metallica who are presently restoring some sinew and cojones to proceedings. Front man James Hetfield
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Call it ‘nan-archy’: the anarchy of rock’n’roll grafted onto the spirit of the nanny state. The Red Hot Chili Peppers bounce and rave pleasingly in front of a huge rolling message board which instructs us to recycle our old mobiles, not to wash our towels too often, and to ‘rethink’ how we bring our shopping
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Almost exactly 24 years ago, in July 1983, the IRA planned to kill Charles and Diana by bombing a Duran Duran concert at the Dominion, Tottenham Court Road. I was at that gig, aged 15, and here I am again, aged 39, watching the same band and trying to work out whether Simon Le Bon
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Al Gore’s message to the planet is that the cavalry are not the cavalry: the American Indians are the cavalry. An Inconvenient Truth? More confusing than inconvenient, I would say. Never mind: Al looks the part in earth tone polo shirt. One might be forgiven for thinking the man was planning another run at the
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At Wembley Stadium for Live Earth: host Chris Moyles has just tried to sell a used 4×4 to two billion people watching the great eco-event. The atmosphere is indeed amazing. Uh-oh. Genesis -combined age 380 – have tottered on stage and struck up Turn It On Again. Is this a terrible warning from Al Gore?
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Al Gore has done a Q&A with Independent readers ahead of today’s Live Earth concerts and while most of the exchanges are rather predictably about carbon offsetting, food miles, Gore’s political future and the like, this one rather stands out: You shared a room at Harvard with the actor Tommy Lee Jones. Of the two