Category: “Media”

Despite feeling like death warmed up on waking – am on antibiotics for a chest infection and anti-depressants for Le Chien Noir – I enjoyed the BBC Big Questions debate. I know Nicky – no relation – Campbell inspires mixed views, but I think he holds the ring in live, and lively debates, really well. [...]

Technical hitches earlier. Here is link for transcript of my evidence to the Leveson inquiry. And here is the submission I made. And with thanks to one of my twitter followers, who has sent me cuttings from today’s papers, I can say something I never thought I would say – that the straightest reporting of [...]

I know it has been posted on several of the main news websites, as well as on the Inquiry website, but I thought for the record I should put it here too. SUBMISSION TO THE LEVESON INQUIRY FROM ALASTAIR CAMPBELL Thank you for your letter drawing attention to my statement of 2004 that ‘if the [...]

What with my best friend dying, too many speeches I’d contracted to do, too many charity gigs I’d committed to, my film on bagpipes taking me to the Hebrides, not to mention an inability to live without exercise every day, I am reaching the end of the week in a state close to exhaustion. That [...]

The post has just arrived and in it a very nice surprise, the discovery that Jacques Seguela, one-time adviser to President Mitterrand, now close confidant of President and Madame Sarkozy (indeed he intoduced them), and something of a legend in French political communications, has dedicated his latest book to little old moi. With apologies for [...]

Having been through a few ministerial media frenzies, and knowing as I do how the press can twist and distort every little detail to feed the frenzy, even with Tories I like to let the benefit of the doubt linger for as long as I can. It partly explains why you will have to look [...]

I had really wanted to see the ‘My Resignation’ documentary on BBC4 last night. It is an interesting theme and the people making it seemed a cut above your average instant docmaker. Having interviewed me on a rainy day like today, they were also polite enough to tell me when the programme was on. But [...]

A few thoughts on some of the many loose ends still threatening to stifle the full truth or, perhaps, strangle some of the key players in the phone hacking scandal. First, for James Murdoch – I am finding it very hard to understand how on Tuesday he could reveal his shock at learning that News [...]

The last time David Cameron flew in mid-frenzy from an overseas visit, he did the right thing on arrival home in announcing a judicial inquiry into phonehacking and the broader practices of the press. He should do the right thing today – and finally admit his judgement let him down in hiring Andy Coulson as [...]

It is evidence of just how badly David Cameron has handled the News International scandal that he is having to cut short a planned – and important – trip to Africa. Indeed, amid all the talk of victims of phone hacking, the victims of the spreading famine can be added to the list. But for [...]