Addiction, Breakdown and Finding Persevilience: Rory Interviews Alastair

How has Alastair managed to come back from some of the darkest places in his life, overcoming a breakdown while in the public eye? Is his obsession with work unhealthy, or necessary to achieving great things and what does it cost his family and those around him? And, beyond the personal, could the word he invented, “Persevilience”, be the antidote to populism, polarisation and post-truth? Listen to Rory Stewart interviewing Alastair Campbell for part one of Persevilience where they discuss all of this and more. Producer: India Dunkley Video Editor: Louis Mealing Social Producer: Emma Jackson Executive Producer: Bella Soames Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:07Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome to The Rest Is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 0:10Rory Stewart?

  And me, Rory Stewart.

• 0:11Alastair Campbell?

  And this is part one of a mini-series, and this one is about my new word, perseverance. Described as follows in the book: "The ability of an individual, group or organisation to turn any situation, setback or meaningful experience into a positive opportunity to grow, to advance and secure their core interests and beliefs." So why have I invented that word? I've invented that word because I think the world does need that sort of word, because it's about trying to turn, I guess, everything negative into something a bit more positive in our own lives and in the world. I wonder if that's what spin is. Part one is coming up, and part one is going to be a rather weird event, where Rory Stewart, you may have heard of him, he presents The Rest Is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell, is going to interview me about whatever he chooses to.

• 0:55Alastair Campbell?

  We've then got a series of interviews with people who are in the book and who, to me, represent different aspects of what I see as perseverance. One, for example, I think is fairly obvious, David Blunkett, former senior cabinet minister, very good friend of mine and who has been blind all his life. Also talked to a former footballer, Clark Carlisle, who was a very good player, played in the Premier League, not least with Burnley, but has several times tried to take his own life, sometimes in really brutal circumstances, but is now in good shape and is the chair of the UK's one of the leading mental health charities, Mind. And then also, and this will be our first interview when the series goes out, with Kim

• 1:39Alastair Campbell?

  Ledbita, who Rory and I have both interviewed on Leading, but who became an MP, not least because her own sister was murdered during the Brexit referendum. We've paired her up with a very, very close friend of mine called Lindsay Nicholson, who was, I account in the book, has had more pain, grief, loss, suffering than most human beings could bear, and her account of how she has borne it is an important part of the book. So I shall now shut up and let Rory take over.

• 2:11Rory Stewart?

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• 2:13Alastair Campbell?

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• 2:24Rory Stewart?

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• 2:35Alastair Campbell?

  Fuse Energy does not accept that, because the energy transition is not something that just happens somewhere else.

• 2:42Rory Stewart?

  Fuse is building an energy company which is designed to bring down the cost of energy, and right now its tariffs are up to £100 below the off-gem price cap.

• 2:52Alastair Campbell?

  So switching isn't just about paying less, it's about expecting more from your energy company, and it only takes you three minutes.

• 2:59Rory Stewart?

  Switch to Fuse at fuseenergy.com/politics, use the code POLITICS, and you'll get a free trip plus subscription, allowing you to hear all the extraordinary members' content that Alistair and I are now producing for you. Visit fuseenergy.com for full terms and conditions. You've written books on different things, I think, that interest you and people. I mean, obviously there have been your diaries, but there's obviously been a real interest in leadership, vision, management, strategy, communication.

• 3:32Rory Stewart?

  And then somewhere you've begun to centre around this word, perseverance. When did you first have this word? When did it first occur to you?

• 3:41Alastair Campbell?

  When I was writing a book about depression.

• 3:44Rory Stewart?

  Ah.

• 3:46Alastair Campbell?

  And there are some themes that if people have read my book on depression, I've written two now, The Happy Depressive, I guess that's a perseverance thought, isn't it? The happy depressive, because that basically is me saying, I get depression, but I'm mainly quite happy with my life. And then when I wrote the bigger book about depression, Living Better, I was just trying to wrestle with the idea of what I was saying and whether there was a better way of summing it up. So that's the first time I used the word. It feels to me not like perseverance, not like resilience, not like persistence, but it feels perseverance, it's more positive. And then it was actually a publisher who said, "Look, I love your word, and you keep banging on about how you'd like to see it in a dictionary, write a book about what it is and what it means."

• 4:31Rory Stewart?

  And just before we sort of get deeper into your personal life, tell us what you think this word is saying and its component parts.

• 4:44Alastair Campbell?

  I would say the obvious component parts are perseverance, resilience, persistence and patience. That's where the words are coming from. But they feel, all of them, I'm afraid, including patience, because as you know, Rory, I don't think patience is a virtue.

• 4:59Rory Stewart?

  No.

• 5:00Alastair Campbell?

  I think if something needs doing...

• 5:02Rory Stewart?

  You need to sort it out.

• 5:03Alastair Campbell?

  Try and sort it out, and if you can't, move on to something that you can sort out. I think resilience to me is about banging your head against a brick wall. I say in the book, for example, that I think one of the reasons that Keir Starmer lasted two years and Tony Blair lasted 10 years is that Keir Starmer saw his resilience as a great strength. It is a great strength, but not on its own. It has to have all the positive things that take you through the things that are forcing you to be resilient. So I see the word for an individual as being, whatever problems are being thrown at you, your responsibility to yourself and your family and everybody else is to genuinely

• 5:46Alastair Campbell?

  try to think through how you can address them, not to wallow in them, not to moan about them, but genuinely how do you try to address them? And then for a government and for a country or for a cause and a campaign, it's how do you take everything that happens to you and turn it into an opportunity to move in the opposite direction, to move forward, not backwards?

• 6:06Rory Stewart?

  Now, when I began the book, I thought maybe that the point about perseverance is it was a sort of morally positive form of persistence or resilience. It was persistence and resilience in a good cause.

• 6:21Alastair Campbell?

  With values.

• 6:22Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, but there's a rather interesting bit in the book where you speculate on whether, in a sense, Donald Trump and Nigel Farage, you obviously don't like and his values you don't share, might not also have a form of perseverance.

• 6:33Alastair Campbell?

  They do, they do. And it's interesting, when I was talking to Fiona whilst in the process of writing the book, and I said, and so I thought of all these people who are in the book that I've mentioned, who I see as sort of shining lights of perseverance, you know, some of we might, we're going to be interviewing for the series, but also lots of others, some famous, some that you've never heard of. And Fiona said, "Yeah, but you've got to say, Donald Trump's perseverance, if that's your definition." And that's why I think you're right to have picked up on the fact, for me, he has all the attributes you need for perseverance, apart from the most important, which is that there has to be, there have to be values and integrity at the heart of it.

• 7:14Alastair Campbell?

  So I would argue that, why do I say that Trump is, on one level, perseverant? Just the very fact of losing an election, which virtually everybody in the world knows he lost and accepts he lost, but it is quite perseverant to say, "I'm just never going to admit that I've lost, I'm going to pretend I've won, and eventually I'm going to persuade enough people to reelect me." It's incredible.

• 7:38Rory Stewart?

  And it's something that you get to in Farage as well, and I sort of sensed in people like Liz Truss too, there's a sort of relentlessness in these politicians, that they never accept that they're beaten. It doesn't matter what the headline is, it doesn't matter how many times they've lost. I think you point out that Farage failed to be elected eight times or something astonishing. They just keep going.

• 8:00Alastair Campbell?

  They keep going, and now I think with Trump, it's almost an illness, that because I think he believes he didn't lose the election. I think with Farage, he kind of knows that he's a bit of a con man and a bit of a showman, but he has secured thus far an awful lot of what he's tried to achieve. Now, the reason why I also write about Putin, and I talk about how Putin sees himself in this sort of, you know, Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Vladimir the Great, that's how he sees himself, I don't believe he will ever be seeing like that, although he has shown a lot of the qualities that in other people I highlight, in terms of just keeping going, turn everything that goes wrong to your advantage in some way. So they're the kind of basic qualities, but then you need, I think it's important to have these, these values on top.

• 8:46Rory Stewart?

  One thing I think that most listeners won't really understand is how people keep going. So let's take Nigel Farage, who you know reasonably well, and you've seen quite a lot of.

• 8:58Rory Stewart?

  Most of us would feel, "Oh my goodness," you know, if people were writing that about me in the newspapers, if I'd lost eight times, if I'd screwed up as badly, if I was in scandal after scandal, I'd just want to go and hide my head.

• 9:10Rory Stewart?

  Do you think he feels often very distressed, very battered, that it's actually difficult for him to get out of bed in the morning, that that the sunny face that we see is conceding the fact that it even for him must be pretty painful often?

• 9:26Alastair Campbell?

  I'm thankful I've never had to be in a bed while he's waking up to face the day to see what he's like in the morning, but I think less than Trump, actually. I think Trump at some deeper level must have a very, very big hole inside him. I think to be cited as, seen as the most powerful man in the world, but constantly have to say so and constantly have to advertise his own greatness. I think with Farage, it's something different. I think Farage is a genuinely, I don't think he'll see those, I don't think he'll be too affected by all the bad headlines. And I think he sees the positives everywhere. So, I mean, I say in the, in the book, you know, he had, he had that plane crash, came out smiling,

• 10:09Alastair Campbell?

  he had that car crash, came out smiling, all those defeats, I'll show you. And I think you need that relentlessness. Funny enough, I've just seen, we've just, Fiona and I have just been to see the De Gaulle films, which I really do recommend to everybody. They're absolutely superb. But the second one, a lot of the focus is on this guy, General Leclerc, and one of De Gaulle's generals, Free French, and he's got it. He just, I don't care, it's a film and it's romanticized, whatever, he's literally trying to get from A to B in this battered old truck with bombs flying around him, tanks firing at him, but he's just sort of, nothing will stop him. And he has, he actually says at one point, to achieve anything

• 10:50Alastair Campbell?

  in life, you have to be obsessed. Now, that may or may not be true, but I do think an element of, you use the word relentlessness, I think that is a form of obsession. I think the other thing I'm trying to do in the book is to turn what I know other people define as negatives in me into positives. So, a lot of people think being obsessive is a bad thing. A lot of people think being addicted to things is a bad thing, and it is, okay. So how do you turn those into positives?

• 11:19Rory Stewart?

  And maybe, are you partly saying that you suspect that many people that people admire are a bit obsessive and addictive and unbalanced? In other words, there's you with people saying, you're an obsessive workaholic, you've got a bad temper, et cetera, et cetera, and you must feel, yeah, but I got quite a lot done. And maybe, I don't know, are you suggesting that our idea that the best kinds of people get things done are always balanced, work-life balanced, well-rounded individuals? Or do you have a suspicion that sometimes a lot of the world runs on people who aren't like that?

• 12:03Alastair Campbell?

  You need all sorts, but I do, I think that a lot of people assume that the problems in their life are insurmountable, that there is no way out of the social or economic situation that they might be in. And for some of them, that may be true.

• 12:19Rory Stewart?

  Let me interrupt there for a second, because maybe I didn't frame it right. What I suppose I'm getting to is that, do you sometimes think that what people perceive as your negative qualities were actually the secret of your positive qualities?

• 12:31Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, I see.

• 12:31Rory Stewart?

  That if you'd been a more laid back, balanced, work-life balanced, rounded person, you might not have actually got as much done?

• 12:39Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, hundred percent. I mean, this morning, I didn't sleep very well last night, okay? And there'll be lots, and, and the, the world does affect my sleep, you know, there's lots of bad stuff going in the world. But whenever I say to Fiona in the morning, oh, really bad night, she'll say, well, you're doing too much. She always just say, you're doing too much. And it's true, I might be doing too much.

• 13:00Rory Stewart?

  One of the things that stops you sleeping well is that you've just packed too much into your day, so your mind is worrying.

• 13:04Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, there's too much going in, or there's too much to come.

• 13:06Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 13:07Alastair Campbell?

  It means less about what's gone, it's what's to come. But then, so then I said, we sat down, had a cup of coffee in the morning, I said, yeah, but okay, all right, to have less in my head, I'm going to have to do less. I've got to go out this morning because I'm going to be talking about the book. Should I have not written the book? And she said, we didn't need to write the book. And it's true. I said, no, I didn't need to write the book. I've written 22 books. I didn't need to write any of them. But I think, yeah, the obsessiveness is definitely, I think, what drives me. And it, and I like, I quite like the periods when I don't have it so much.

• 13:41Rory Stewart?

  I wonder whether this isn't one of the things that we struggle with, which is

• 13:48Rory Stewart?

  probably historically, people were more comfortable with the fact that a lot of men, they were predominantly men, who got things done, were not entirely balanced and normal, right? And that you didn't really expect Gladstone to have a great work-life balance, and that maybe part of what makes Alexander the Great is, he is a bit megalomaniac and paranoid, otherwise he wouldn't have done what he did. And we're struggling with this because we also have another set of values, which is about your personal, not your public life. And maybe we're, we're struggling to work out how to talk about the fact that

• 14:31Rory Stewart?

  often people who achieve genuinely impressive things may not be in their private lives models of balance.

• 14:38Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. I, I think that's right. And I mean, I think, you know, you've, you've been in frontline politics. I've, I've spent a decade working alongside somebody who, you know, I always say with Tony Blair, he worked bloody hard, but those of us who were working for him usually had an hour on either end of his day, because we're preparing for it and then picking up pieces from it to keep going. So people like myself and Jonathan, Angie, Angie Hunter, and all this sort of team around him, we worked, I'm not saying we had as much responsibility as he did, but we probably in some ways worked harder. And I think you, and my children were young at the time, and you kid yourselves that you can give them everything that a good parent should be giving. You do your best,

• 15:20Alastair Campbell?

  but it's never good enough. And I, and I, and I think it's taken me a long time. It's really interesting how, for example, I've ended up, when I structured the book at the start, I had no plans to write it in the way that I've written it, ending with this chapter, which is, it's a sort of, it's a love letter to Fiona, but I guess in, in some ways, it's also a bit of an apology, because I don't think you can. Now, she would, Fiona would probably, if she was here, Fiona probably, well, I haven't really changed much. I still will, you know, say as we're on holiday in Italy, no, we can't go yet because Santa Marian hasn't arrived, or I'll still be very focused on work-related things.

• 16:01Alastair Campbell?

  But I think most, if you look at most, David Owen, you know, former Labour Foreign Secretary, founder of the SDP, et cetera, he's, he's got a whole thesis about politics and madness and that, you know, most people who strive and succeed in, in politics have got

• 16:21Rory Stewart?

  Something a bit wrong. It's something I feel, because as, as you know, to your fury, I spend far too much time hanging out with CEOs of big American tech companies. And they are deeply weird people, of which the one that everyone knows about is Elon Musk, but I can assure you, the other 20 of them are all really weird.

• 16:37Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 16:38Rory Stewart?

  And when I go on holiday with them, they're literally on their laptops all the time.

• 16:41Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 16:43Rory Stewart?

  And they are working 120 hours a week, and they would say, you cannot be a very successful entrepreneur or the CEO of a big company unless you

• 16:54Alastair Campbell?

  And do you think they're right?

• 16:55Rory Stewart?

  Unless you live like that. I suspect they probably are, because the, the only experience I've had in my life, which was like that, was running Turquoise Mountain. And that was probably the thing I was most proud of. And I did it with no wife, no kids. And I just thought about nothing else, did nothing else, worked every weekend, and it really worked. I mean, there's something incredibly productive about being completely absorbed every waking minute in a project, as opposed to balancing it with something else. The, the result is, of course, that we struggle with the question of role models. So I'm going to come to you on this role model point, right? Because on the one hand, of course, these people that we're talking about, ranging from you to, you know, I don't

• 17:40Rory Stewart?

  know, the CEOs of a big company, are role models in the sense they've achieved a lot. But in other senses, we're kind of saying to our kids, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you don't want to be like that, because they don't seem completely rounded. What's your sense of how we deal with this question of role models? I mean, occasionally we find exceptions, don't we, like Nelson Mandela, we can all agree on is lovely because he's achieved a lot and he's also a nice guy. But it's not that common that we come across somebody who has

• 18:04Alastair Campbell?

  Mandela, I mean, as you know, I call Mandela the patron saint of perseverance, purely because of that surviving 27 years in jail, coming out with a smile and then completely transforming his country. It's one of the greatest stories of humanity. But I was talking recently to, and, and one of Fiona's oldest friends is the daughter of Joe Slovo, who was one of Mandela's key people in the, in the ANC. And, you know, if you talk to, I'd love, I've never met Mandela's children to talk to them, but I wonder how much they think, because one of them died when he was in prison, I wonder how much they think, well, my dad was never here for me. He was in jail, fighting a bigger fight.

• 18:47Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 18:47Alastair Campbell?

  I know, I know children of people who are involved in the anti-apartheid movement, who, whose strongest sense is, yeah, well, yeah, we've got democracy in South Africa, but you know, my life's pretty fucked up. So I think it's very, that, the role model thing is, is fascinating, because you get

• 19:05Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, I write about Neil and Glenn Kinnock in the book as a perseverant relationship. Okay. And their kids are both great. Steve is now in the cabinet and Rachel is one of my favourite people on the planet. And Rachel has once said to me that, you know, we look to you and Fiona as role models of parenting. What? What? I was slightly panicking about it because, but then when she explained it, I kind of understood it. She said, well, I get the feeling that you've got good relationships with them all and they're based on the fact that they sort of know that you're busy, but when you're not, you're always there for them, et cetera. Now, I don't know if that's what they say or not. You get this as well. You get people on the back of the podcast saying, you know,

• 19:49Alastair Campbell?

  the way you talk about politics, we get loads of students saying, you know, you're my role model. I want to follow what you've done or whatever. So I don't know, I, I, but I think that, I do think that this, what I define as this perseverance, the ability to, to have a sense of who you are, what you want to achieve in life and just to keep going. There's got to be a thread to it all.

• 20:10Rory Stewart?

  Let's start with the mental health stuff. I mean, that's been so central to you for a very, very, very long time. But if we go back to when it first happened, so this first breakdown is when you're sort of 29. Presumably at that point, it wasn't something that you talked about openly or shared openly. It's something that you began to share openly after that. Is that right?

• 20:30Alastair Campbell?

  It kind of was something that I shared openly. Not openly, I didn't sort of go around advertising it. But I was quite high profile within newspapers. I wasn't known by the public, but I was quite high profile within newspapers. All of whom knew that something had happened, that something had, I'd gone mad, I'd been arrested and I'd ended up in a psychiatrist.

• 20:51Rory Stewart?

  And can I interrupt you? Because one of the things I think the audience often doesn't quite know is exactly what happened. Is that something you're not comfortable talking about?

• 20:59Alastair Campbell?

  No, I'm totally comfortable.

• 21:00Rory Stewart?

  So, so, so what, what, what was actually the thing? Was it, was it post alcohol? Was it alcohol? Was it a psychotic episode?

• 21:07Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, well, it was a psychotic episode, which depending on who you talk to, but the psychiatrist who diagnosed me went out. So I was arrested because I was behaving strangely up in Scotland.

• 21:19Rory Stewart?

  And what, what were you doing?

• 21:20Alastair Campbell?

  I was sort of, um, what was I doing? I mean, it definitely been building up for a while. It's funny how the same people come in and out of your life. I was going to Scotland with Neil Kinnock. Because even though I was the news editor of a paper, the new paper that was about to start, because it was the Today newspaper, which was a bit anti-union, which should probably the reason why I should never have gone in the first place. It was politically troubling me. Nobody in the Labour Party would, was having much to do with the paper. So I persuaded Neil to let me go with him, do a big profile, et cetera. I'd been working flat out. Fiona and I had fallen out. I'd moved into a hotel. I was drinking very heavily. I was, you know, the night before I'd virtually emptied a minibar. We fly to Scotland. I get to Scotland. I hire a car.

• 22:07Alastair Campbell?

  When I knew I was completely off the rails is when I was going round and round this roundabout near the Rossyth Naval Dockyard, where I was about to go and see Gordon Brown and Neil Kinnock.

• 22:17Rory Stewart?

  So you were supposed to be reporting on them, but you were just driving around and around and around.

• 22:21Alastair Campbell?

  They were going off to the Scottish Labour Party Conference via this visit to Rossyth to see Gordon in his constituency. Then a young MP and I just got stuck on this roundabout, round and round, round, round, round. I then dumped the car. Gave the keys to a guy at the naval dockyard.

• 22:37Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 22:37Alastair Campbell?

  Who just thought, what am I dealing with here? I said, phone this guy called Jeremy Deeds at this number. Tell him I've left my car. I can't drive. I then find a cab. I get a cab to Perth.

• 22:47Rory Stewart?

  Who was Jeremy Deeds?

• 22:48Alastair Campbell?

  Jeremy Deeds was the managing editor of the paper. And so I get to Perth and by now I am, I'm becoming conscious of losing control of my own mind.

• 22:57Rory Stewart?

  And what does that feel like?

• 23:00Alastair Campbell?

  It's really hard to describe. It feels like anything you look at, you think is speaking to you. So there's a camera. It says Sonny. Why is it spelt wrong? S O N Y. S O N. Son. You're a son. Is this to do with your parents? Why? You then look over there and you see Charles Dickens. Did you not read Charles Dickens enough at school? Is that why you're being punished? You think you're being punished? Your mind is just on this constant loop. When I, when I, I remember when I got arrested and I was driving in the back of this car.

• 23:35Rory Stewart?

  In the back of a taxi?

• 23:36Alastair Campbell?

  In the back of, no, in the back of a police car. And these buses were overtaking me and I was trying to do these anagrams of the, of the, the, the name of the bus driver, of the coach company. So your mind's just losing control and, and, and by then I'm, I'm hearing things as well and I'm seeing things.

• 23:52Rory Stewart?

  And, and when you hear and see things, is it that you're half conscious that it's not real or you totally believe it's real?

• 24:00Alastair Campbell?

  It's hard to explain. Uh, you think it's real. But you are constantly testing everything that it's communicating to you. So, you know, as you know, I had brother who had schizophrenia. This was in Scotland. Neil Kinnock was the leader of the Labour Party. He was a big figure.

• 24:17Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 24:18Alastair Campbell?

  There was a piper to pipe him into this dinner that he was going to. So a piper walks past me.

• 24:22Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 24:23Alastair Campbell?

  Okay. I stopped this guy. He's wearing a kilt. He's carrying his bagpipes. I say, is this because of Donald? I said to him.

• 24:31Rory Stewart?

  I see. Okay. But of course he didn't know who Donald was.

• 24:33Alastair Campbell?

  He had no clue. So he said.

• 24:34Rory Stewart?

  Donald being your dead brother who was a piper.

• 24:36Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. So he says, what are we talking about? And he goes, he can sense immediately, I'm not, something wrong here.

• 24:42Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 24:43Alastair Campbell?

  He wasn't unpleasant.

• 24:44Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 24:44Alastair Campbell?

  But it was like, um,

• 24:48Alastair Campbell?

  yeah, he, he just looked like this is really weird. So I'm thinking, why won't he talk to me about Donald having schizophrenia?

• 24:53Rory Stewart?

  Because you're convinced that he knows Donald and he knows.

• 24:55Alastair Campbell?

  I'm convinced there must be a reason why he has passed me right at this time, carrying a set of bagpipes while I'm starting to hear voices, which is what Donald, so I'm now thinking I've got schizophrenia.

• 25:05Rory Stewart?

  So when you're hearing the voices, you're, you're also half conscious. You shouldn't be hearing the voices. That one of the disturbing things about.

• 25:11Alastair Campbell?

  Well, it's a mix. So you can hear, I can hear his voice, but I can also hear Elvis Presley singing. Is Elvis Presley singing or isn't he singing? He's not. I'm hearing it.

• 25:19Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 25:20Alastair Campbell?

  Um, I have a massive rows in the office. Well, I know the office is not there. So why am I hearing these massive rows in the office?

• 25:26Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 25:27Alastair Campbell?

  And then these two policemen arrested me.

• 25:29Rory Stewart?

  And they arrested you because you did what?

• 25:33Alastair Campbell?

  I think they just realised they were actually special branch.

• 25:37Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 25:37Alastair Campbell?

  And they, and because the, the other complication, it was the, it was the day that Olof Palmer, the Swedish Prime Minister was assassinated.

• 25:44Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 25:44Alastair Campbell?

  So security around Neil was quite tight.

• 25:46Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 25:47Alastair Campbell?

  So I think they just thought, this guy's spending his day with Neil Kinnock. We'd better keep an eye on him.

• 25:51Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 25:51Alastair Campbell?

  I think so.

• 25:52Rory Stewart?

  There's some weird guy who's trying to get too close to Kinnock.

• 25:54Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was, and specifically what I was doing, I was emptying my pockets and my bag on the floor. And I think I was starting to take my clothes off.

• 26:01Rory Stewart?

  Right. Okay.

• 26:02Alastair Campbell?

  So they came over. They were very nice, actually.

• 26:03Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 26:04Alastair Campbell?

  They were very, very nice.

• 26:05Rory Stewart?

  But they would have, but they would have picked up pretty quickly that you were not with it.

• 26:08Alastair Campbell?

  I was really not well.

• 26:09Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 26:09Alastair Campbell?

  And they were actually really nice. And funny enough, when they said to me, are you okay? And I said, no. That was the, I felt such a relief because I'd been probably not okay for quite a few weeks. And every time Fiona said, listen, you're all right. I'd be saying, why did you keep talking to me about whether I'm all right? You know, you know, and then you do that. You've got the problem, not me. I'd been doing that for weeks whilst drinking every morning.

• 26:32Rory Stewart?

  And, and also hearing the voices or not?

• 26:34Alastair Campbell?

  No, the voices only started on that day. Yeah. And the point about perseverance, you see, I say in the book that both Fiona and my sister.

• 26:40Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 26:41Alastair Campbell?

  Who's the only one left of the four of us.

• 26:42Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 26:43Alastair Campbell?

  They both think I hang on to this too much.

• 26:45Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 26:46Alastair Campbell?

  But I think the reason I do is because I think the way I dealt with it thereafter is what made me feel I have this kind of perseverance.

• 26:55Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. I mean, it, it is an incredible moment because here you are aged 29 and

• 27:02Rory Stewart?

  you have got this amazing career because you've just got this fancy job in a new newspaper. And then you've just blown up in the most humiliating way possible outside a Labour Party conference and you're thinking,

• 27:15Rory Stewart?

  particularly with what, so you write about this in the book, what's been going on the previous few weeks. Fiona's not going to stick with me. And am I going to be able to keep my job? Presumably also have I gone completely mad? So I'm not going to be able to work for the rest of my life. So it's an unbelievable moment because it's a moment where you might have felt, well, this is the end.

• 27:30Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. I did. I did. I felt that on several levels. Actually, on the day, I know this is an insane thought, but I thought I was going to be killed. I thought I was being tested. I was failing the test and the punishment was death. I thought that is.

• 27:45Rory Stewart?

  And so again, it sounds strange, people. Is it that you had an idea of who was going to kill you or?

• 27:50Alastair Campbell?

  No, no.

• 27:51Rory Stewart?

  Just you would, you would be, you would be killed.

• 27:54Alastair Campbell?

  And then, and on the professional front, I just thought, you know, I was probably a bit cocky and arrogant anyway. So a lot of people were loving the fact that I'd blown up in

• 28:03Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 28:03Alastair Campbell?

  smoke. But actually, when, when I went back to the mirror.

• 28:07Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 28:08Alastair Campbell?

  I left, I left them today. I went back to the mirror and they were absolutely brilliant. And the reason, this started with you asking if I was open with them. I think it was one of the best decisions I ever made. I just decided when they asked me what happened, I'm just going to tell them.

• 28:20Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 28:21Alastair Campbell?

  I'm not going to say, oh, I was a bit stressed. I'm just, I'll tell them.

• 28:24Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 28:24Alastair Campbell?

  And within a few weeks, no, a few months, I was able to laugh about it.

• 28:31Rory Stewart?

  And who was the editor who took you back?

• 28:33Alastair Campbell?

  Richard Stott, Richard Stott.

• 28:34Rory Stewart?

  So presumably that, that is a big thing.

• 28:36Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, huge.

• 28:37Rory Stewart?

  Huge act of confidence, isn't he?

• 28:39Alastair Campbell?

  Totally. Yeah. Because he's the guy who told me not to leave the paper in the first place. And then he, he was the first person who phoned me up, who was, and he offered, he said, listen, come.

• 28:47Rory Stewart?

  Let's stick on him for a second because we, you don't talk much about Richard Stott. And he obviously sounds like an incredible man because he was prepared to take the risk of taking it back again. And he believed that you would still be a great journalist and that it would work out and it, it did work out.

• 29:04Rory Stewart?

  I just wanted though to, to touch on the, this question of disgrace and what that means in someone's life. I'm sort of haunted by this because actually I do know quite a lot of people, professionals of different sorts. Obviously a lot of politicians, but actually quite a lot of public figures and senior figures and hospitals and schools and who at a moment in their career, when it really seemed like they were almost at the peak, something happens. Often the media get after them. And I haven't talked to you enough about that. I mean, what's your experience of people going through that?

• 29:41Rory Stewart?

  And, and who comes through it better and who comes through it worse? And, you know, when is the moment at which people are just like, screw it, I'm going to.

• 29:52Rory Stewart?

  Bury myself and never appear again. And how do you come back?

• 29:55Alastair Campbell?

  It's interesting how many people in politics don't do that.

• 29:59Alastair Campbell?

  When I was going through the mill in terms of later in government. And suddenly, when you're at the centre of a media storm and people are going for you and people, the opposition are calling for you to resign. And the press are digging into every aspect of your life and all that. Funny enough, when that was happening, I was hanging on to my breakdown. And I was saying very, very consciously, this is not as bad as then. I was saying that I would get up every morning and say that this is not as bad as then. You can get through this day. If you can get through this day, you can get through tomorrow. I was suicidal at points and partly that was the depression, but it was also the, just the sort of hell of the circumstances.

• 30:42Alastair Campbell?

  And it's interesting, I've just read that book, Profiles of Cowardice by Jacob Weisberg, I think.

• 30:48Rory Stewart?

  Oh goodness, okay.

• 30:50Alastair Campbell?

  And he's picked on these eight people who he says as examples of people who've enabled Trump. Even though they knew him to be a complete monster and knew what was likely to happen. And he sort of goes through the reasons why he's written the book. And one of them is that, you know, there has to be at some level, a sense within all of them, a sense of shame.

• 31:09Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 31:10Alastair Campbell?

  Now, I suspect with Trump, there isn't, despite, I think the dark hole might be an incapacity to feel things like that. But I think with most people, there is. And I think some of the, some of those people that we may have seen survive scandal after scandal after scandal. I think shamelessness probably helps them in a way.

• 31:34Alastair Campbell?

  But I found it really difficult. And I find, I find, I mean, partly it's because I didn't, quotes, think I'd done anything wrong.

• 31:43Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 31:43Alastair Campbell?

  But I could see, my rational mind could see why I'd become such a target. And therefore, but I did require a lot of inner strength during that period. And especially because.

• 31:54Rory Stewart?

  This is the Blair period. So nineteen ninety seven to two thousand and three, where you were literally right in the centre of everything. And of course, you're dealing with all the fallout of the Iraq war, which of course begins in two thousand and three.

• 32:07Alastair Campbell?

  That was without doubt the worst period of the lot. And, and of course, the reason why I talk about perseverant relationships, that was also the time. At which largely for political reasons, my relationship with Fiona had become so strained.

• 32:22Rory Stewart?

  Because she was supposed to Iraq war.

• 32:24Alastair Campbell?

  She was supposed to Iraq war. She was, she, she couldn't understand why I was literally sort of working myself. You know, eighteen hours a day to, to sort of support and project something that. She felt deep down, because we're so close, she couldn't quite believe that I would believe in this.

• 32:43Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 32:44Alastair Campbell?

  And she knows that I can only really work if I believe in something.

• 32:49Alastair Campbell?

  And so it was really, really hard. But I think that it's a combination. It's interesting. It's so interesting talking to Kim Ledbetter and Lindsay about how they get through. Sort of, you know, grief on an unimaginable scale. And part of it, I think, is we all dig into those parts of our, our character and our history. That suddenly become relevant to it. So I found, for example, on the, on the day that David Kelly's body was found. It was really interesting, the sorts of people I felt I had to speak to.

• 33:25Alastair Campbell?

  And the sorts of people who got in touch.

• 33:29Alastair Campbell?

  Suddenly, these parts of your life tap in in a way that says, oh, well, okay, maybe I, maybe I shouldn't be thinking like that. Maybe I should get through this. Maybe I should keep going.

• 33:39Rory Stewart?

  I mean, what, what we're seeing here is that you're somebody who.

• 33:45Rory Stewart?

  Can be very thick skinned. I mean, you, you often have an attitude towards media stories of Malcolm McMorel.

• 33:52Rory Stewart?

  But you're clearly not entirely thick skinned. I mean, there are things that you feel unbelievably deeply. And I wonder whether the psychotic moment or the way that you felt in two thousand and five. Reflect that you actually also can take things very, very hard. It's not, it's not as simple as you just have a rhinocerous skin and nothing gets through. It's, it's certain kinds of, so what do you think are the things that get through and what are the things that don't in this? In, what is it that really causes the, the pain and the psychic trauma? And what are the things that you feel you can just brush off and?

• 34:25Alastair Campbell?

  I think most media things I can brush off.

• 34:32Alastair Campbell?

  I guess what that was speaking to was just a sense of my whole. I kind of knew I was coming to the end of a really important period in my life. I'd, I'd sort of felt that for some time. Partly because the truth is that if Fiona ever had said, I'm going to leave you if you don't give up the job. If she'd ever said it in those terms, I probably would have left the job. And, and it's interesting. I mean, I talk a lot in the book about my psychiatrist, who, another death that, that I took really badly. Because he was such an important figure to me. Because he was only somebody that I started to see long after I'd left Downing Street.

• 35:07Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 35:07Alastair Campbell?

  I, I got through Downing Street without seeing anybody. And he had this analogy that Fiona was like a fifth limb.

• 35:13Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 35:14Alastair Campbell?

  So I guess that's, that fear of loss, I think, is important in me. But I think the other thing is I have to have, I have to have purpose and I have to have, I think I probably do have a bit of a relevance issue.

• 35:27Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 35:28Alastair Campbell?

  Have to be relevant in some way.

• 35:31Alastair Campbell?

  Relevant to what or to whom? I don't really know.

• 35:33Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. Well, I remember David Petraeus saying, I think, to us. That he talked to Kissinger, which is a kind of amazing string of name drops. And Kissinger had said, the one thing he feared most was no longer being relevant. And Petraeus really felt this. I mean, he took that from Kissinger and is totally determined to remain relevant. In Kissinger's case, he tried to remain relevant since he was almost a hundred years old.

• 36:01Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 36:03Rory Stewart?

  What do you think is going on there? What, what do you think this relevance thing is? Because of course, it was quite dramatic. You'd been right at the heart of everything from ninety seven to two thousand and five. And then suddenly you weren't relevant.

• 36:13Alastair Campbell?

  No, and it could have been coincidence. And it could have just been the art of decompression after a very pressurized period. But the, the depression which followed leaving Downing Street was. If I had to write my top three depression episodes, that was one of the top three.

• 36:32Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 36:33Alastair Campbell?

  And I think it was this sense of, well, what's my purpose? I've had a, now my sister, who's a believer, Christian, she would argue that's the hole. Okay.

• 36:44Rory Stewart?

  That needs to be filled by God.

• 36:45Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And I've never, even though, as you know, I'm very interested in God, I've never been able to make that, make that leap. And so, no, I think it's, the, the honest answer is I don't know. I don't know what it is, but, but I, I've come to terms with it, just as I've come to terms with my depression in different ways. I think I've come to terms with it. I, because ultimately.

• 37:12Alastair Campbell?

  We all, I think everybody has a need to be relevant. So I could, I could easily, at some point in my life, decide that. Relevance could be defined by family, by parenting.

• 37:25Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 37:25Alastair Campbell?

  By a charity job, by whatever. I could find ways of thinking that. But I guess what it is, I, I think there came a point where I thought, if I go through the various stages of my life.

• 37:38Alastair Campbell?

  Education, journalism, politics. I think the skills I've developed over the course of those three different parts of my life. Have kind of got a merit.

• 37:49Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 37:49Alastair Campbell?

  That I think I have a, this sounds a bit pompous, but I sort of have a, a duty to try to use them. I think if you just sat quietly and thought, so if you, you've seen me with people, if somebody asks me to try to help them sort something.

• 38:02Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 38:03Alastair Campbell?

  My instinct is to try to do it.

• 38:04Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. But also for those eight years, it all came together. And there you were at the top of your game, bringing all those skills together. And then suddenly, quite young, you're sort of almost being put into a sort of retirement where you can't use all those skills.

• 38:18Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And then, and then, and I've never been that motivated by money. I don't mind making money, but it's never been my main thing. And I think fun enough, the books, I mean, I've said, I've read twenty two books. And as you say, a lot of them are diaries, but novels and all this. I think the books are a form of, this book really is about. When I say, it sounds, again, it sounds pompous, the word the world needs now. And okay, that's a bit of marketing. But I actually think when I talk to, when I go into schools and talk to kids. I often think, you know, come on, guys, you need to be more, need a bit of perseverance here. Need to work out. How are you going to work out? Okay.

• 38:51Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 38:51Alastair Campbell?

  You're worried about this, you're worried about that. What are you going to do about it? I mean, as you know, I think young people get a very bad rep. I think they've got a lot of challenges to deal with, which we didn't have to deal with. I think the world is a pretty messy place and a complicated, difficult place. And so that's why, partly why I love going and talking to them. I always get a kind of sense of energy off them. And I don't buy into the snowflake generation thing. But I still think that they, sometimes I think they can be given the message that. Don't always think that the problem that's in front of you has to be solved by others. Have your network, reach out to them, but ultimately, there's so much you can do if you think deep in yourself.

• 39:36Alastair Campbell?

  And so that, you know, and that, what I find with young people is that message lands. It's been really interesting. You know, when we did the competition for people to guess the name of the book. It's quite interesting that a sixth of them got it right. And I haven't mentioned it that much on the podcast. That's why I think it's the word the world needs now.

• 39:53Rory Stewart?

  But the paradox, which I think is, the kid might think, listening to you, is. And I guess this is probably true of all of us in different methods, is that. You're both a kind of tough guy and you're somebody who takes things unbelievably hard. So it, it is this sort of odd combination where sometimes you're presented with an alister who's a very tough guy. Who it doesn't matter what anyone does to him, it has no effect on him. And then on the other hand, you talk very, very honestly about episodes where you were completely thrown off balance, more so than other people.

• 40:26Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And they're, they're both, they're both real.

• 40:30Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 40:31Alastair Campbell?

  They're both real. I mean, you know, you, you've seen me in situations where, where somebody has a go.

• 40:37Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 40:39Alastair Campbell?

  As long as I don't feel they're gonna take out a gun and shoot me, it just doesn't bother me.

• 40:43Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 40:43Alastair Campbell?

  I'm happy to argue with them. I'm happy to walk away. I don't care.

• 40:46Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 40:47Alastair Campbell?

  I, I once, and I think family is so important. I remember once saying, I can't remember where I said this, but as I said it, you know, sometimes you, somebody throws you a question and you formulate an answer in your head and it comes out and after you said it, you think, yeah, that was good. I like that. And there was once where somebody asked me, how do you cope? This was when I was, I was war criminal. I was this, I was that. I mean, younger listeners won't really appreciate just how much the Mail, the Telegraph, the Spectator, this lot, just every day, stuff coming at me and, you know, and people who say, how do you, including people in politics, remember Tessa Jall once said to me, how do you cope with this? And I remember saying to her, look, if I thought my mum and dad, who then were alive, if I thought they thought I was a terrible son,

• 41:31Alastair Campbell?

  if I thought my kids thought I was a terrible father, not that I'm not there a lot, but I was a terrible father. And Fiona thought, on balance, I wish I'd never met him, as opposed to on balance, I'm glad I did.

• 41:43Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 41:44Alastair Campbell?

  I couldn't cope with that.

• 41:45Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 41:46Alastair Campbell?

  So work at that and then don't worry overly about this. And even when it affects, I always used to say, if it doesn't affect how I do the job, and that would only have happened, I think this is where Tony Blair is quite a good boss, because I think he understood what was going on. He understood they were getting at me as a way of trying to get at him. And I understood that and he understood that.

• 42:07Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 42:08Alastair Campbell?

  Now, eventually he may have decided, look, you know, probably is right that he goes, but he tried to persuade me to stay, but I knew at the end it was time to go. And, and I think that the crash that followed that was in some ways a creator of the more perseverant approach that I took to this thereafter. And that, and so then what is relevant? So I mean, I, I remember saying to John Prescott of all people, and there was a point where Gordon was trying to get me to go back and get a seat and do this and do that. I remember saying to John Prescott, do you know what? I never, ever want to have a boss again. I never want to have a boss. And it's not that Tony wasn't a good boss. I just want to be my own boss. I want to shape my own life

• 42:50Alastair Campbell?

  on my own terms. Now, some people might have said, that means I want to play golf three times a week.

• 42:56Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 42:56Alastair Campbell?

  I wanna, you know, go on 15 holidays a year.

• 42:59Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 42:59Alastair Campbell?

  But my shape in my own life was I want to do a bit of this and a bit of that and wanna somehow knit it all together and give it purpose.

• 43:07Rory Stewart?

  How, how does the depression and the episodes that you write about in the book, very well in the book, relate to doing the podcast? Listeners see you coming in week in, week out, three, four times a week. You've not missed a podcast in four years. And yet presumably in the background, there are four day periods where you're depressed. There are days when you're more elated, I guess. What's going on there? How, how's that all managed? And, and do you think that listeners know? Do you think the team knows? Or is it just something you keep to yourself and you notice after the event? I mean, what's going on?

• 43:47Alastair Campbell?

  Well, why do you answer? Do you, do you know? Do you notice anything?

• 43:49Rory Stewart?

  Well, I noticed that you can be sometimes very grumpy and sometimes very cheery. I noticed that sometimes you will say, uh, I think it was sort of beginning of last year, you said, well, you've probably noticed I've been pretty depressed for the last few weeks.

• 44:07Rory Stewart?

  And we didn't quite notice in that way. I mean, we noticed maybe that you were much more short tempered, but not, not that you've been depressed, right?

• 44:14Alastair Campbell?

  You give a very bad image by profile.

• 44:17Rory Stewart?

  So I guess the question is, how does the outside world know? And how do you deal with that when you're working with a team week in, week out?

• 44:26Alastair Campbell?

  Well, do you remember, do you remember once, I think I was in Edinburgh and you were in Jordan, I think. This is a few years ago now. And it was fairly early on.

• 44:35Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 44:36Alastair Campbell?

  When we, so within probably the first year, maybe the second year of the podcast. And you started off literally by saying, you know, how are you?

• 44:44Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 44:44Alastair Campbell?

  Okay. And you asked the question and I just said, well, to be absolutely frank, I don't even remember this. I said, I'm really not, not very good. And we ended up having quite a long conversation about depression. And I actually found that very helpful.

• 44:58Alastair Campbell?

  I think when you say, how do you deal with it? I am,

• 45:03Alastair Campbell?

  I don't want to come in. I mean, both Fiona and Tony Blair have often said to me, look, you've got no idea how you emanate a mood.

• 45:13Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 45:14Alastair Campbell?

  Right?

• 45:14Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 45:15Alastair Campbell?

  I'm not conscious of that, but I'm conscious of the fact that people say that to me.

• 45:19Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 45:19Alastair Campbell?

  So I don't particularly want to come in and have everybody thinking that I'm in a foul mood.

• 45:24Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 45:25Alastair Campbell?

  So I'd rather say I'm in a foul mood because.

• 45:28Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 45:28Alastair Campbell?

  Okay?

• 45:29Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 45:30Alastair Campbell?

  And I, I wouldn't advertise to everybody that, look, I'm really going through a bad phase, but I would if I felt it was going to be relevant.

• 45:38Rory Stewart?

  And, and a bad phase might mean you've, although you've come into the podcast and you literally haven't missed a single week, but you might have actually struggled to get up, bed in the morning, shave, open the curtains, and yet you're still turning up and doing the business.

• 45:53Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I think it's more likely that I'll be feeling this is a struggle and this feels like a chore. But so you, you would notice it more if you were with me afterwards.

• 46:06Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 46:07Alastair Campbell?

  Cause I would suddenly have an absolute energy slump.

• 46:11Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 46:11Alastair Campbell?

  Because the effort, when you're depressed, to keep going in that way is really quite, takes a lot out of you. The people who really, really, really know me.

• 46:22Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 46:23Alastair Campbell?

  Get it in the voice.

• 46:24Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 46:24Alastair Campbell?

  And the eyes.

• 46:25Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 46:26Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Uh, so.

• 46:27Rory Stewart?

  And how are you at the moment?

• 46:29Alastair Campbell?

  I'm fine, Rory.

• 46:32Alastair Campbell?

  I am, I'm fine. I am fine. Uh, I'm not sleeping well.

• 46:35Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 46:36Alastair Campbell?

  But I think that's to do with.

• 46:38Rory Stewart?

  And does that worry you sometimes? Do you, I mean, is, is part of the problem of this condition that you can sometimes think, oh, I'm not sleeping well.

• 46:45Alastair Campbell?

  If I'm not sleeping well, it's bad. Yeah.

• 46:46Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 46:47Alastair Campbell?

  It, it is more likely a precursor rather than, so, so when I'm not sleeping well.

• 46:52Rory Stewart?

  It's a warning sign.

• 46:53Alastair Campbell?

  It's a warning sign and it basically means just dial back a bit.

• 46:58Alastair Campbell?

  So that, and, and, and added to it, I mean, it's true, like, you know, I don't remember, I don't think I say this in the book, I think I do, where David, my psychiatrist, we used to talk a lot about my dreams.

• 47:09Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. And in, he mentions that you have amazing name dropping dreams is one of them.

• 47:13Alastair Campbell?

  He said, he said that this is the first time. What happened? When he died, his wife very kindly sent me a folder of all his notes.

• 47:20Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 47:21Alastair Campbell?

  And in one of them, it just said, first time ever, Thatcher, Blair, Wenger and Mandela all in the same dream.

• 47:32Alastair Campbell?

  But I do have.

• 47:33Rory Stewart?

  You, you have these strange.

• 47:34Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, I do dream about Donald Trump and Liz Truss and, you know, I just do. It's like, so I think, I think politics can get me down and, and affect my sleep.

• 47:47Alastair Campbell?

  So, you know, but it's interesting what you say about the, because I, I honestly, I'm pretty good at the moment and I've had quite a long period. I actually think the podcast has been good for me for that, because I think, I think forcing yourself to think in a structured way about a lot of madness going around you is actually quite a helpful therapeutic. I don't know if you found that, but I certainly find that. And I also think the fact that, you know, and, and you've, it's weird talking to you like this, because you, you've seen so much of this, you know how I always feel that when you and I are out and about and people come up and say, I love your podcast. And I can always say, I think in different ways, we both find it a bit difficult. Don't really enjoy it.

• 48:28Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 48:29Alastair Campbell?

  Because to me, doing a podcast alone does not fill the relevance gap.

• 48:35Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 48:37Alastair Campbell?

  It's, it's, it's part of a picture.

• 48:39Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 48:40Alastair Campbell?

  That if I do all the other things, I can say, yeah, you've still got a bit of relevance.

• 48:44Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. One of the things that you've also begun to become very honest about is, is not just yourself, but children and being a parent. So you've written very openly about Callum's struggles with alcoholism and

• 49:01Rory Stewart?

  you've talked about, uh, him going into Alcoholics Anonymous and what that meant. You've also talked about moments where he'd been dishonest to you, stolen from you. What does it mean to be perseverant? Not just an individual, but as a parent?

• 49:18Alastair Campbell?

  Well, that was when Callum was sort of descending into alcoholism. And by the way, I wouldn't talk or write about this if he wasn't happy with me so to do. And I think the reason he is quite happy for me to do, he's not somebody who seeks the limelight at all. But he has just recovered, or he's, you know, he would say he's a recovering alcoholic. Um, and, you know, I also write in the book about you can have institutional perseverance. And Alcoholics Anonymous is just the most amazing organisation. And it's, it's, you know, I think you could say it's been a lifesaver for him. And he now gives an awful lot back. He gets and he gives. Um, and how did we get through that as parents? It was really,

• 50:02Alastair Campbell?

  really hard. I think the, I think, I don't know what you're like as a parent in terms of fixing, but I think both Fiona and I like to think we can fix any problem. And I think the key, a key moment really was when we sensed that Callum was beginning to understand that he had to fix the problem. But that he, there came a moment at this rehab place he was in up in Scotland, where we sensed that his mindset on it was changing. That was the key. The key was not us trying to fix it. Um, but it was, it was, I don't know how we got through it, to be honest. It was absolutely hellish. Um, neither of us were sleeping then. And you were just convinced, we were both convinced at a certain point, we're gonna get a knock on the door, there's gonna be a knock on the door. Something's

• 50:47Alastair Campbell?

  happened. He's fallen in the canal. He's done this, he's done that. Um, but he's amazing. And, and, and that, you know, seeing him now, he's just sort of, you, you just think he's got perseverance, you know, to have been as low as he was, as addicted as he was, behaving the way that he did, and now sort of doing all the stuff he does, it's, uh, but it's, I, I can't, I don't know is the answer to the question. You just have to dig really, really deep into your own reserves. Interestingly, one of the inspirations for the book, you mentioned the Archbishop. He's got a right hand guy, used to be at Lambeth called Chris Russell, who's also a man of the collar and faith. Um, but he

• 51:28Alastair Campbell?

  actually, he said to me, uh, ages and ages ago, you know, you should write a book about you and Fiona and how you've dealt with each other. And, and so that's mainly, that's partly why there's so much about the family through this. Cause I think, I think relationships, perseverance is, if anything, the most important part of this. Um, but I'm not pretending it was easy, or that I've even really, there's still parts of it I haven't fully come to terms with, I think. But, um, it's anybody who's ever watched that. And, and weirdly, people always used to say, well, you had trouble with alcohol, and you got through that. So that must have been able, must have been a help. It wasn't, it wasn't. Because I think, I'm thinking, I could fix this, or you could fix this, if only you did what

• 52:12Alastair Campbell?

  I'm saying you should do. And it's just the worst thing you can do in something like that.

• 52:16Rory Stewart?

  Well, okay. I mean, this is a slightly awkward segue, but I, I, I guess it's something that you have talked a lot about, and you're very interested in. I mean, in that chapter on Alcoholics Anonymous, you talk about another institution, which you see as perseverance, which is, which is the monarchy.

• 52:31Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. Hmm. And I think the chapter heading says, what do Alcoholics Anonymous and the monarchy have in common? Um, and I write about that in a way from, because I'm trying to weave politics in and out of the book. And I think I've said to you before that my first memory of a political row was with my mother, when I refused to watch the Queen's Christmas message.

• 52:54Rory Stewart?

  Oddly, sometimes I think your mother sounds a little bit, it's a terrible thing to say to you, but she does sound sometimes a little bit like Trump's mother. I mean, she's, who, who again famously was the Scottish lady from, from the Western Isles.

• 53:04Alastair Campbell?

  No, no, my mother's from Ayrshire.

• 53:06Rory Stewart?

  Okay. So your father's from the Western Isles.

• 53:08Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But my mother, my mother was born in the same week as the Queen, and she was called Elizabeth.

• 53:13Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 53:13Alastair Campbell?

  And she loved the Queen.

• 53:15Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 53:15Alastair Campbell?

  She absolutely loved the Queen. But she loved, she loved Charles as well.

• 53:17Rory Stewart?

  So it's your father's family that's more like Mary Trump's family?

• 53:20Alastair Campbell?

  My father's family have got nothing in common with anybody who has the name Trump. Uh, but no, but my, my, the, the thing about the monarchy is that, so that was my first kind of sense of a political impulse. You know, why do I have to watch this woman who wears a crown and talks with this weird voice, when I could be outside playing football?

• 53:40Rory Stewart?

  And how old were you then, this rebellion?

• 53:41Alastair Campbell?

  Uh, six or seven.

• 53:43Rory Stewart?

  Right, okay.

• 53:43Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, quite young. It was definitely before eleven, because we moved house, and I can remember the house we were living in. And, um, but I think the reason why I speak to your friend, King Charles, and the institutions' perseverance, is because I say in the book, look, there are only so many fights you can fight, and get rid of the monarchy. Give up.

• 54:04Rory Stewart?

  I, I love, I love the moment where you did acknowledge that there are moments where you sometimes wonder whether a politician or a celebrity, it was necessarily what you want doing that role either.

• 54:15Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I, it, well, and, and, yeah.

• 54:18Rory Stewart?

  Because I imagine your Republican thing is partly that you actually slightly resent the idea that there's any unelected person doing that role. It wouldn't necessarily be much better if it was Frank Bruno or Gordon Brown.

• 54:29Alastair Campbell?

  I, I think the thing with, with the King and the monarchy is, is the sort of class thing, and it's the toffery and all that. But, and the other thing, I love, how many times have we said this on the podcast, I love good speeches, and I love people who can make good speeches. And I have to say, his speech in Congress, I think that was the moment where the doubts that a lot of people had, that he could do the job after the Queen, evaporated. And since then, you've seen his own perseverance in relation to his health. So, yeah, I, I'm basically just saying, because it's interesting, one of the people who read the book at the publisher said, you know, do you think it's part of perseverance to know when to give up? Now, instinctively, I will say never give up.

• 55:10Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 55:11Alastair Campbell?

  Right? But I think there is a point where you think, listen, you thought that you maybe can pay for that bit, you've written about it, but now you've lost.

• 55:19Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 55:19Alastair Campbell?

  It's not gonna happen.

• 55:20Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 55:21Alastair Campbell?

  They're gonna be here at least well past your sell by date.

• 55:24Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 55:25Alastair Campbell?

  So go fight about climate change, or something else.

• 55:29Rory Stewart?

  Your mother would be very happy.

• 55:30Alastair Campbell?

  She would. She'd be, she would be really happy. And I think that's the other thing about grief and death. I think, I don't know if you think, you talk about your father who's dead. I mean, I, I think this thing about people who are dead, still being with you when you're thinking through good things and bad things.

• 55:48Rory Stewart?

  You, you talk to them a lot, don't you?

• 55:49Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah. You just have chats with them and say, what would you think? If I'm struggling when I'm writing something, I talk to Richard Stock. Hey, what do you say here? Old man, he's called every day. Come on, old man, give me a bit of help. My friend John Merritt, who was married to Lindsay before he died, I talked to him, I talked to Ed Victor, my old agent. Uh, you know, when I get, when I get an offer on the book, is that enough, Ed? What do you think? So imagine what he'd say. And he has got the best name drop I've ever had, that's in the book. Alistair, can I call you back? I'm just getting on Bono's playing with Cher. Or was it Cher's playing with Bono? I can't remember. One of the two.

• 56:22Rory Stewart?

  One of the two. Well, let's, let's, let's get back to, as we come to the end. Um, as I said, one of the things that you write about a lot in the book is death.

• 56:31Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 56:33Rory Stewart?

  And

• 56:33Alastair Campbell?

  It's quite a cheery book though, isn't it?

• 56:35Rory Stewart?

  It is a cheery book. It's, no, it's a good, it's a good book. And it's, it's a, it's a really thoughtful book. And I thought your passages on your friends and on Fiona were the best bits of the book, are really powerful. But there's been a lot of death. I mean, you're not that old.

• 56:49Alastair Campbell?

  No.

• 56:50Rory Stewart?

  But two of your brothers have died?

• 56:52Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. A lot of friends.

• 56:53Rory Stewart?

  And a lot of friends. And we, and we come back to them, we come back to eulogies, we come back to memories of people you care about who died. And there's a, a question about relevance and Fiona and aging that worries me, which is that, um, one of the problems with getting older, particularly if you get older and, and like, you're different, and you're gonna lose your wife, you would enter a stage where you necessarily are less relevant, because you're just getting older. And, uh, where you're alone. And that's something you do write about. And tell us a little bit about your thinking on that, because you, you mention it in passing in the book.

• 57:31Alastair Campbell?

  No, this goes back to David Sturgeon and the fifth limb. I, I don't think I could have, but I know that practically I couldn't cope without Fiona. And I'm not sure I could cope emotionally either. Now, the truth is, I've been amazed. I mentioned Neil, I mentioned Stan Turnan, who's a friend of mine, he's the Burnley manager, they both lost their wives. And look, Neil is still grief stricken, okay? But you've seen him a couple of times recently. He's lively, he's thoughtful, he's energetic. Um, Stan has become a great cook. Uh, it's sort of, I just don't think, I fear, and it's a fear, it's a real fear. So now

• 58:14Alastair Campbell?

  as it happens, Fiona's amazingly fit and keeps herself amazingly fit. Um, so yeah, that's a real fear I have, that I would, that she would die before me. Is that it actually makes me feel more comfortable about my own death. Now then some say, well, what about her? But the thing is, I don't have any worries about Fiona being able to cope.

• 58:32Rory Stewart?

  You think she'll be okay?

• 58:34Alastair Campbell?

  I think she'd cope quite well. Oh, quiet life.

• 58:38Rory Stewart?

  How about old age and relevance? I, I, I sometimes feel when I see people in their eighties and early nineties, particularly people like you who've had very, very big public careers, that it can be a bit tough. I, I had a bishop say to me recently that he realizes now he's ninety, that his whole life, he'd prided himself on how quick his mind was, on how smart he was. And now he's slowing down. And it, it hits him at the core of his identity.

• 59:07Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. No, look, I think if, both my parents are dead, neither of them, uh, had Alzheimer's or dementia. Um, I've seen quite a lot of people who do have Alzheimer's and do have dementia. I think if I went down that route, I find it very, very difficult. Um, I think there is something about knowing when to stop. Now, I say in the bio, I will never retire.

• 59:32Rory Stewart?

  Hmm.

• 59:32Alastair Campbell?

  And that is a mindset I have now. That could change. Um, but I think, and it's not about being relevant, the, the truth is that

• 59:44Alastair Campbell?

  You mentioned Mandela. Mandela is relevant for the rest of time.

• 59:48Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 59:49Alastair Campbell?

  Um, I think that might be, I'm not putting myself remotely anywhere near.

• 59:54Rory Stewart?

  Let's just put that on record.

• 59:55Alastair Campbell?

  You're not Nelson Mandela. I'm not, and I never would. But I think that the reason why I sometimes think that books are more important, say, than the spoken word. This may change as this, you know, the technological revolution goes on. But I think books are an important part of enduring relevance. Your kids are an important part of enduring relevance. And, and I think sometimes your views can be, there are people who are hugely relevant in our politics that most of our listeners and viewers have never, ever heard of because we talk about their ideas, but they're just their ideas that happen to become part of people's lives. So I don't think it's, and I, I also think that, I think part of what my struggle has been

• 1:00:35Alastair Campbell?

  has been when you're defined as a journalist, you're defined, you are the political editor of the Daily Mirror. That's your job. You're defined by that. You are the Prime Minister's Press Secretary and Director of Communication. That's the definition. I think it's taken me a long time not to care too much about what the definition is, other than to me.

• 1:00:56Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:57Alastair Campbell?

  So I don't care how I'm defined anymore.

• 1:00:59Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:59Alastair Campbell?

  I care, I care about happiness that I hope I am building in the course of the rest of my life.

• 1:01:07Rory Stewart?

  Final one for the reader of the book, for Perseverance. What do you think is the one message in that book which you wouldn't have been able to get to 30 years ago? Writing it today, what do you think that the message is that reflects the Alistair of today, not the Alistair of 30 years ago?

• 1:01:26Alastair Campbell?

  I think that the me of 30 years ago was relying almost entirely on instinct

• 1:01:36Alastair Campbell?

  as opposed to deep thought and being trying to be rational about yourself. I also think that the reason why I miss David Sturgeon so much is that I felt that having somebody, I know you've done this as well, but having somebody that you could literally unburden yourself to and then spend a few days thinking about that and writing about that is what's made me, I hope, more reflective, more reasonable. I've still got a temper. I can still fly off, but I think I'm a lot more reasonable than I used to be.

• 1:02:17Alastair Campbell?

  I think I'm also, in terms of the, the positivity, look, there are still people who, as you know, we talk about them a lot in the podcast, there are people I despise.

• 1:02:25Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:25Alastair Campbell?

  Okay. But in the main, I've found that the me of today, way more than the me of 30 years ago, can see the potential positivity and perseverance in virtually everybody that I meet.

• 1:02:38Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 1:02:40Alastair Campbell?

  I think once you start to think that there may be more to this person or more to this view than you initially thought, you can, you can find that way. So I think it's made more positive.

• 1:02:51Rory Stewart?

  And, and so the message is that perseverance is in everybody. In that, in that sense, it's an optimistic book. It's a book encouraging people to find their own perseverance.

• 1:02:59Alastair Campbell?

  So come on, Rory, what does perseverance mean to you? And who's a perseverant person in your life? Either your family or a famous person or a politician or, or a historical figure, anybody.

• 1:03:10Rory Stewart?

  Well.

• 1:03:11Alastair Campbell?

  You can't say Alexander the Great.

• 1:03:12Rory Stewart?

  I can't say Alexander the Great or Theresa May. So I'll go, I'll go with my, I'll go with my dad. Um, so my father,

• 1:03:20Rory Stewart?

  I just, actually, you know what? I'm going to go with my mother. I think I spend far too much time praising my father. My mother is about to turn 91. And I don't know what it's like about to turn 91. She gives the impression that she is 70. I mean, there's just no change that you can see. And I imagine it must be often bloody awful being 91. And yet she gets out of bed every morning. She's got a huge smile on her face. The whole thing seems effortless. She can fly out to Jordan to babysit. She can come out to, down to London when she and I are travelling. She's supporting local charities, supporting the local church, she's editing books.

• 1:04:02Rory Stewart?

  And she never gives a hint that there could be something wrong. But I'm pretty sure that there's quite a lot going on beneath the surface and that's real perseverance.

• 1:04:12Alastair Campbell?

  Very good, very good. Who would I choose who's, there's, obviously there's tons and tons of people who are in the book.

• 1:04:23Alastair Campbell?

  Funny, if I was going, if I was going down the family road, I'd go with Fiona's mum, who is 101. Now, I can't pretend she has a smile on her face all the time, but she's bloody amazing. And she still plays the piano and she still follows the news and has, has views and so forth. So I, I think that there is a positive to aging, uh, which maybe I'm starting to think about more than I, I used to. I think if I had to look at all the people that I've kind of looked at in the book, I mean, the reason, I've dedicated the book to Fiona and Lindsay. Fiona, because she's put up with me, but I think Lindsay's perseverance. Uh, and she's one of the people I've interviewed with, along with Kim Ledbita.

• 1:05:08Alastair Campbell?

  Um, I don't know if, she's had lost her husband, then lost her daughter, uh, breast cancer, car accident, uh, then lost her job, second marriage went wrong in really horrible circumstances. And yet if you bumped into her on a train and just chatted to her, you'd say, oh, she was really nice. She was really positive about life. So yeah, I think I'd go Lindsay.

• 1:05:33Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 1:05:34Alastair Campbell?

  You know, it, it's interesting. One of the people in, in, involved in the process said it's kind of, it's not, it is a memoir, but it's not a memoir. It is about politics, but it's not really about politics. It's partly about politics. But actually ended about saying, I tell you, I get a guy yesterday who's read the manuscript, who's part of the publication process, who said, thought I'd just let you know, I've just done my first half marathon and I was inspired to do it because I read about how you tackled your first marathon. So there's a bit of kind of, it's not, I don't want to see it on the self-help.

• 1:06:05Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 1:06:06Alastair Campbell?

  Section.

• 1:06:06Rory Stewart?

  Don't want to bet.

• 1:06:06Alastair Campbell?

  Well, actually, I don't care where it is.

• 1:06:10Alastair Campbell?

  But it's like, it's a mix of all those things. And then of course, there is a very, very powerful political message as well. Um, I actually say, I actually say, I wrote this as it was at the printer. I had this postscript thought. Uh, you probably haven't seen this because I think I wrote this after the proofs went to you. And it basically says, you'll have heard us talk a lot about the three Ps on the podcast, populism, polarisation and post-truth. I've got, my three Ps now can defeat those three Ps.

• 1:06:40Rory Stewart?

  Yes.

• 1:06:41Alastair Campbell?

  Perseverance, people with principles.

• 1:06:44Rory Stewart?

  Ah.

• 1:06:45Alastair Campbell?

  The new three Ps.

• 1:06:46Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 1:06:46Alastair Campbell?

  The positive.

• 1:06:48Rory Stewart?

  Well, let's finish with that. Perseverance, people, principles, but particularly.

• 1:06:51Alastair Campbell?

  My new three Ps.

• 1:06:52Rory Stewart?

  Particularly perseverance. Thank you, Anissa, very much.

• 1:06:54Alastair Campbell?

  Thank you.

• 1:06:56Alastair Campbell?

  Now, I would like you all to join me on Sunday night for a special virtual gathering, 6:30 PM UK time. To receive the invitation, sign up to our newsletter at therestispolitics.com/newsletter and we'll send you the link on Sunday to join us. I'll be talking to Izzy Stanley, our journalist on Trip, about why I came up with the word perseverant, why I wrote a book about it, how it shaped my life and who has it. I'll also be taking your questions. Hope to see you there.