The Alastair Campbell Diaries

Shortly after Tony Blair stepped down as Prime Minister, the BBC screened this three-part version of Alastair Campbell's diary from his time as press secretary for Blair. They were screened on BBC2 on weekday evenings at around seven or eight o'clock. This struck me as unusual because for weeks there had been little other on TV than news about Blair – even Channel 4 did a run of films on the subject. Here is a man who was the "other man in the room" during a period of time that saw great success (he deserves great credit for calling the Diana thing spot on) but also the fiasco that was the case for the invasion of Iraq (and indeed the entire ongoing war) but his story in his own words, from the inside of all this, is not being treated like the biggest thing the BBC has done for years? Watching the first 30 minutes answered all my questions as I was treated to a dull programme with marginally more insight than someone who has read the papers daily for the last 15 years could have given us. Despite this I did watch all three episodes because I though maybe the election campaign and the Diana affair were just weaker material and that the sleaze of later years combined with tensions and of course the whole Iraq thing. Sadly though, it never actually does anything and all I could think was that the sketches Rory Bremner did with Andrew Dunn had been of more interest and insight than this.

Although it is stressed how important Campbell is and how big his role was within the major political events of our time, we never really get the impression that this is true from what he allows us know. You get the feeling that Campbell understandably wants a big payday from is diary but doesn't want to burn all his bridges or incriminate himself or his former colleagues. As a result what we get is a tiny bit of "dirt" dished on those that we already know the business about – Mandleson etc but nothing that I was surprised about. This leaves the stuff we didn't know as amusing rather than engaging – Brown getting locked in a toilet, a scuffle breaking out between Campbell and "P.M." and such things. It is hard not to feel that his observations are trivial considering what he claims to have been involved in and indeed this is the overwhelming impression I got of the films – trivial.

With such gutless material it is perhaps no surprise that the presentation is lacklustre but the actual delivery is so bad that it did strike me that perhaps I was witness to some sort of payback from the Beeb. It did surprise me that the BBC and Campbell had come together on this project but seeing how poor it was perhaps explained it. The use of clips is mostly poor and there are no contributions to support what Campbell is saying. Speaking of Campbell talking – well, he sounds like one of those people that tells you "this vehicle is reversing" – except not quite as expressive. I cannot overstress how terrible his narration is because it is just one flat monotone; amazed me that this is supposedly the man who worked the media for his employers benefit but can only summon up the charisma of a dripping tap when given his own stage. The delivery is only made worse by the absurd footage of Campbell on the phone or (even worse) pretending to write in a book – lest we forget that this is meant to be him reading direct from his diary. On top of this it doesn't help that Campbell plays the company line throughout which means that everything is just as it has always been, not defensive but certainly never critical and Campbell makes sure we all know how much he cried over some of the "unforeseeable" things that occurred as a result of the actions he was involved with. What else would you expect from the man known as the king of spin? Overall then, a terribly pointless mini-series of films. Campbell narrates like he is asleep, while the delivery is roundly poor. The material is just what you'd expect but doesn't even have the dignity to be defensive – instead he just wheels out the obvious story. The attraction of the film and the book is to get the inside-story from the "other man in the room"; it delivers nothing of the sort and just ends up being dull and amateurish.