Alastair Campbell on Private Passions with Michael Berkeley 27th June 2021

For almost a decade, Alastair Campbell was Tony Blair’s right-hand man, first as Press Secretary and then as Downing Street Director of Communications. He was at the heart of power through the Good Friday Agreement, the 9/11 attacks and the Iraq War, which involved him in the greatest controversy. These days he’s a writer and mental health campaigner, and he’s recently published a very frank book, “Living Better: How I learned to survive depression”.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Alastair Campbell talks about how music helps him manage depression, and reveals his lifelong passion for the bagpipes. His father, who was from the Hebrides, played, and he and his brother Donald learned as boys. Donald was diagnosed with schizophrenia when Alastair was only nineteen: “a defining event in my life”. Donald left Alastair his bagpipes when he died, too young; and he also left recordings of himself playing – one of which we hear in the programme. Alastair himself played the pipes as a busker in the South of France as a student, where he discovered a lifelong musical passion for the songs of Jacques Brel.

Other music choices include Mozart, Schubert, and Verdi’s famous drinking song from La Traviata. Alcohol has played a major role in Campbell’s life, and he talks about being drawn to the “drinking cultures” of both piping and politics. In fact, he says, it is not alcohol but politics – and his need to be needed by people in power – which is his real “demon”.

He discusses too his inability to retire, his hatred of domesticity, particularly shopping with his partner Fiona, and why the satirical series “The Thick of It” is in some ways very close to the bone.

A Loftus Media production from BBC Radio 3
Produced by Elizabeth Burke