Alastair Campbell Interview
Radio Five Live, 4th March 2000
Adrian Chiles
(interviewer): Yesterday I walked up Downing Street, hammered on the door, asked the
custodian if there was a Burnley fan in residence, he said: "Yes, come this
way." Alastair Campbell is the Prime Minister's Press Secretary. Some people call him
the second most powerful man in the country, others call him things I couldn't possibly
broadcast. But on the day before a full house at Turf Moor watches Burnley versus Preston,
Mr Campbell was charm personified, possibly because we were on his favourite subject:
Alastair Campbell: Well, when I was growing up in
Keighley, when I was four, they were League Champions. And so you had Leeds - not that far
- you had Bradford - not that far - and you had Burnley. To be fair, my Dad used to take
us to different games, but I just always liked Burnley. I think the first thing that I
really liked, aged four, was the colours. And also, Burnley have always had - although
when the hooliganism thing was rampant we did have problems and also from time to time
there have been some pretty unpleasant things going on - but by and large Burnley fans
have always been fantastic.
Can you identify what you actually love about the
club?
There's a passion there that… you know it’s a
small town. When you drive in or when you're coming down from the Manchester Road railway
station, especially now with the two new stands, you've got the town there and the first
thing you see is the football ground rising up out of it. It's just like the focal point
of this community. As I say, when I was four they were League Champions, and then
twenty-five years later they nearly went out of the League. And as they've gone down, in
an odd sort of way, those who have stayed with them have got more and more passionate.
And now, when you've got the whole buzz going round
with Ian Wright, sell-out crowds and all the rest of it, you're bringing back a lot of the
people who maybe fell by the wayside for a while, but you see this potential that I've
always felt. Added to which - I don't know what it is to be honest - I mean, the further
I've moved away from the North, the stronger the bond has become. I can't really give you
an answer, I don't know. It’s probably completely irrational.
When I was little, when a bad thing happened at the
Hawthorns, as it frequently did, I used to think, "When I'm older, when I've grown
up, this won’t hurt as much as it does now." But it actually hurts more now. It
affects me more now than it did when I was eleven.
Well two weeks ago when Wright made his debut, and
we were playing Wigan, I thought we played well. It was funny actually because all these
national newspaper journalists who are normally watching, you know, Liverpool and Man U,
came over and they wrote it up as a terrible game and Wright didn't play very well. I
thought it was a fantastic match and I thought he played well.
But in the last minute - the fifth minute of injury
time - this ball fell and Mitchell Thomas whacked it and it hit the bar. And I promise you
on the train back my two boys who were with me, they were absolutely sick of me because
probably every two minutes I was thumping the table and saying, "Why couldn't it have
been just one inch lower?" So I feel that it doesn't get any better. And equally the
highs are just as good, you know. Had it gone in, that would have been just as fantastic
as when I was seven and Willie Morgan was on the rampage.
Have you got any advice about kids? Because I've
just had a daughter who's twelve weeks old - in fact the Albion have only won once in her
lifetime. I live in West London, so how do I make sure she doesn't grow up to be a Chelsea
fan or an Arsenal fan or - heaven forbid - a Manchester United fan? How do you
indoctrinate your kids, as you seem to have been fairly successful at doing?
I'm afraid I've only had fifty per cent success
with the boys, and my daughter is marginal. There's a picture there of one of my boys when
he was a Burnley mascot aged five. He did have a great time, but then Alex Ferguson, who's
a friend of mine, I'm afraid indoctrinated him rather more powerfully than I have. So one
is a Man U fan, I've got one boy who's as fanatical about Burnley as I am, and I've got a
daughter who tells me she supports Burnley and who tells her Man U brother she supports
Man U.
The other thing you've got to do is get them out in
schools spreading the West Brom gospel. My boy who's a Burnley fan, he gives cast-off
shirts to his mates, and he's got about half a dozen kids in his class who support Burnley
as their first or second clubs.
You must have seen your Burnley son disconsolate at
times. Don't you ever chastise yourself: "How could I have done this to the poor
kid?"
No, because he's got a choice. We do go and see Man
U, I do try and get to some of their games with them, but I feel that young kids who are
growing up just imagining that all you can support is Manchester United or Arsenal or
Chelsea, I really do feel they're missing out. I feel that, up against Preston with a
sell-out crowd of twenty-odd thousand, I promise you - and he will know by the end of
today - that the atmosphere is every bit as good, and better, than Man U-Bordeaux with a
sixty thousand crowd, for example.
You can hardly criticise him for supporting
Manchester United, because all he's doing is what you did when you were a kid, which was
support the team that were winning everything at the time, which would happen to be
Burnley then.
I don't think you could really say that Burnley in
1960 were the same as Manchester United now. And the other difference was that it was
pretty much my local team. The difference now is the access kids have through television.
They see these guys the whole time - they're on television all the time. And it’s a
very very powerful medium and I think it’s a lot harder now for families to get into
games. It's expensive - if you're bringing up a small family, try getting a season ticket,
try getting tickets - it's difficult. Whereas even when Burnley were doing very well, you
know, you could always turn up and get in.
I wonder whether part of the attraction with Burnley
is that you can just wallow in your powerlessness to have watched their descent for all
that time. It can't be something that you feel much in your work - you've got ultimate
power almost. At Burnley you've got no power at all, you've just got to watch them slide
and suffer.
The power thing is a separate discussion, probably
for a different programme, but I think it’s pretty overstated myself. But I think the
thing about Burnley, it is the one part of the week when the switchboard knows not to
bother me and if a journalist pages me he's completely wasting his time, and I just get
into it. And you're right, you don't have any power to influence what's going on, but
that's the same for every other fan in the ground, whether they're supporting Burnley or
they're supporting Preston.
But those other fans probably don't wield any
influence in the way that you do during the rest of the week. I wonder if it must be
especially frustrating for you.
No. If you really love the club and you enjoy
football anyway, you can just get into it and everything else just kind of peels by the
wayside, and you can forget about it.
What kind of manager do you think you'd make?
Because you sort of coach your people - the Cabinet or whatever - you tell them how to
deal with things. But then they go out there and start fighting amongst each other or cock
something up in the Commons, and you're as powerless as Burnley's manager is on the bench
at Turf Moor.
I think there are similarities and one of the
things that Alex Ferguson and I talk about - and we do talk quite regularly - is the whole
business about dealing with different pressures. You know, the pressure of the media which
can be very very intense, and how to deal with them when they're trying to get you on to
their agenda and you're trying to get them on to yours. And the other thing is just that
in this job you do have to have a relentless focus on the things that really matter. And
it's difficult because you've got all sorts of people and papers and TV and radio wanting
a bit of you, wanting you to be focusing on what their interest is, and your job is to
keep absolutely focused on the main event, the way forward and the next game.
I'm not surprised you're friends with Sir Alex,
because from a PR point of view it’s a very similar problem where you're disliked
because you win everything. It's a very similar issue, Manchester United and New Labour.
Well, I don't know that we exactly got the treble
last year, but I certainly think it's interesting that in the media now, and more so in
the newspapers - and the newspapers do have a huge influence on the radio and the way they
cover things - the desire within the media really is to 'do in' anything that's thought to
be very powerful or very successful or bigger and better than anything else.
I think there is a feeling in the media that you've got
this Government in there, you've got this Tony Blair bloke who seems to be able to keep
going on whatever we throw at him, they've got a three figure majority, and I think the
common view in the media is that the opposition isn't exactly up to much. So they're
coming at us the whole time, and our job is to try and see them off. And I think Alex does
feel that quite a lot, that the media's out there and doesn't like Man U because they're
the best - apart from Burnley.
But you were very good at that as a journalist. I
mean, I never saw you looking to praise anything that the Tories did in the 80s.
No I didn't, and I've got to be careful in this
area because I accept that. I was a kind of get-in-there-and-kick-the-Government
journalist. The only thing I say is that there weren't many of us at the time. At the
moment, I think most of the papers do see it as their job to try and cause us as much
trouble as they can.
Just to go back to you as a manager. Would you be a
smashing-the-tea-cup manager? I mean, when you got your troops in, say you had full-backs
Livingstone and Dobson coming in after Question Time, what would you do? Would you smash
the teacups and say: "How dare you fight on the pitch like that!" How would you
deal with it?
I've got a bit of a temper. On occasion, and I
probably shouldn't, but I tend to lose it. I tend to lose it with the journalists. So,
yeah, I've got a bad temper.
They call Alex Ferguson 'The Hairdryer' because when
their hair's wet and he's rollocking them, he dries their hair and all the spittle and the
hot air coming out of his mouth... perhaps you'd do the same thing?
Er… I've got a temper.
All right. On the last Cup Final day I interviewed
Jack Cunningham. And I was absolutely thrilled and appalled at the same time at the depth
of his knowledge about Newcastle. Because I thought he was a kind of New Labour New Lad,
he's got to have a football team. But blimey, is he serious or what? Is there anyone else
as serious as him apart from you round here?
Well, Jack Straw, definitely. I'll tell you who's a
big football fan who's got a pretty encyclopaedic knowledge is Ann Taylor, the Chief Whip.
Jack Cunningham, you're right, has got an absolutely awesome knowledge of Newcastle. Peter
Pike, Burnley MP - top man.
And the PM? I wouldn't dare to ask him if I
interviewed him, but if I was to say: "What two positions did Willie McFaul play at
St. James' Park," would he know the answer?
He would, he'd know that one. I think I know that
he knows that one because he did a thing for a Newcastle fanzine where he picked his
all-time team, and I think McFaul was in it. But look, he is a football fan and he does
watch a lot of it on the telly. But it is different when you're him. You know, him going
out to a football match is a big palaver, and to be honest I think he'd love it if he
could do what I do and just pick up the kids and go off to a match. It's not quite the
same for him. But, you know, I'd say he knows more about football that most people.
There's a friend of mine who's one of the London
Clarets who's done some trivia questions for you. I mean it's all right for him, he
doesn't actually have to ask you them.
OK, so Burnley hold the record for the longest unbeaten
run in the same season. How many matches was it and in what season?
Well I know that our longest run was in 1921.
Right. How many matches?
Thirty.
Correct. Who scored the hundredth F.A. Cup Final
goal at Wembley? It was obviously a Burnley player, you haven't been to Wembley that many
times. So that is?
Jimmy Robson.
Yes. And Burnley's only other Cup Final goal?
Bert Freeman, 1914 against Liverpool.
And which current multi-million pound Premiership
striker has scored for the Clarets in a competitive game?
Multi-million pound? Er, well the only one I think
of - I'd be amazed if he's worth multi-million pounds - is Danny Sonner of Sheffield
Wednesday.
Its actually - well it might be true - I don't know
whether he's multi-million pounds, but its Stan Collymore, own goal, playing for Stafford
Rangers, F.A. Cup First Round, November 1990. Were you at that game?
I wasn't, no.
The demise of Burnley. Can you put the finger on
what actually happened? Because if all the things you say are true - you know, everyone's
passionate in the town, a lot better support, fabulous feel, players loyal to the
place… if you put all those in a pot then out should come a consistently successful
team. So how did you end up having to beat Orient on the last day of the season to stay in
the flaming League?
I think in an odd sort of way, Burnley, with the
way that the game was developing over time, it's almost as if we defied gravity in staying
up in the top flight as long as we did. Although this is probably just wishful thinking in
many ways, you just have to look at the buzz there is at the moment, a sell-out crowd
today, and you think: "Well maybe we can get back up there and stay up there,"
and that would be absolutely fantastic. I'm sure you could write a PhD thesis on a
question like that. For me, the bit that I really felt - although I guess that probably we
were already on the skids a bit at the time - that John Bond's managership was an absolute
and total disaster for us.
I think it was for most clubs, as I remember.
Yeah, well I'm not bothered about them to be
honest. He came in, and I think the values that underpinned his approach - they didn't
strike a chord with the sort of thing you were talking about, and it just all went wrong.
And as to the Orient business, I think that that was the moment, no doubt about this at
all, that was the moment when anybody who had anything to do with Burnley in the past just
felt, my God, we almost lost something that really really means a lot to us. And we'd just
better make sure that never happens again. Everywhere I go I meet Burnley fans. And
everywhere you go you hear people say, you know, "Burnley, ought to be a big
club," and they should really.
When have you genuinely lost it, in terms of happy
losing it. Have you ever just genuinely gone berserk and lost your marbles with joy?
Er… well, the picture behind you. Funnily
enough both left us for Preston, David Eyres and Gary Parkinson. The play-off finals when
we beat Stockport. We were 2-1 against nine men, but the last few minutes were just
absolute agony because the nine men appeared to be all over us and we were holding on, so
I completely lost it then. I lost it when we beat Tottenham 4-1 when we were then, I
think, in the old Third Division in the League Cup. It was the day when Brian Miller got
sacked as manager. I lost it then. I lost it when we thrashed Leeds 4-1 at Elland
Road…
…And what is this? Leaping around, screaming,
hugging strangers…?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, just going completely and totally
mental, yeah.
What would entice you out of a Burnley game? Will
you switch your pager off during the Burnley-Preston Game?
I don't switch it off, but it doesn't make a noise
and I don't have to look at it if I don't want to. And it usually only goes off if
it’s the switchboard and it's urgent. The only time I've actually ever gone out of a
game was that ex-spy, David Shayler, when the Mail on Sunday were running something and
there was all this discussion about injunctions and all the rest of it. I got dragged out
for that and I missed the second half against Bristol Rovers and I was not very happy.
Give me an honest answer. You've got twenty minutes
to go tomorrow and you're 1-0 up but just clinging on and the pager goes off and it says
Ken Livingstone is going to stand as London Mayor. Would you leave the ground then or
would you just pretend that you hadn't got the message or hadn't felt it because
everything else was throbbing anyway?
No, I'd just jump up in celebration at the fact
that he'd finally made his mind up.
Tell us about Burnley-Preston tomorrow. What does
that mean, it's not like the Blackburn-Burnley game, but is that a big one?
Well, given that Blackburn aren't in the same
league - yet - it is a big one, yeah, it's huge. And as you know, it's a sell-out. And
Preston is just down the road, added to which I imagine David Eyres will be playing. I
don't know about Nogan and I don't know about Parkinson. But it'll be a fantastic
atmosphere, added to which, you know, Ian Wright's been there two games now, he's got to
score sometime. Although you know this thing about him not scoring? What's been
interesting is the way he's been drawing defenders to him the whole time during set
pieces. Last week against Colchester both goals came from Steve Davis, the
centre-half…
…and they're running into the spaces he's
creating?
I think so, yeah. And against Wigan he did two or
three things which you don't normally see in the Second Division. So all those hotshot
Premier League football reporters who came and said he wasn't up to it, I think they're
wrong.
Are you happy with Burnley in the position of
filling up pension funds for the likes of Ian Wright or Chris Waddle? Do you mind the odd
football celebrity coming in at the end of their career?
Well, the thing about Ian Wright - I don't know how
much he's getting paid, let's assume that it's a fair old whack - but he put seven
thousand on the first gate. Colchester last week had their biggest crowd for years, we're
sold out tomorrow, the atmosphere around the place is amazing and the club's having to
take on extra catering staff to cope with the demand. So I think it's great. As I say, I
don't know how much he's paid, and I do think there's an issue about footballers' wages,
but am I pleased that Burnley have gone out and got somebody who has put such a buzz into
the place? Yes I am.
A friend of mine's a Gillingham fan and he's got a
spare ticket for the Burnley game next week, he just wonders, if you want it, can you get
to Gillingham on Tuesday night?
Well, the only thing is that as it's not that far
from London, I suppose the boys will want to go as well. But they've changed the ground
haven't they, because Gillingham's a bit of a nightmare, isn't it?
So you're going to go up, then?
To where? Tomorrow?
No, up to the First Division.
I think we're in very good nick now, yeah. I think
there's an outside chance we can get up in the top two, but I'm confident we'll get in the
play-offs. And I love the play-offs. When we beat Stockport it was fantastic, and I think
we'll be up.
When I go and see my producer my heart sinks because
I know he's going to talk about Gillingham all the time. When the PM walks into this
office, do you start going off about Burnley and do his eyes start glazing over?
Well, I got him to appear in the Burnley centenary
video. No, I'd better rephrase that. The Prime Minister was very happy to appear in the
centenary video, as was Ted Heath, who opened the Bob Lord stand, you know. Yeah, although
he is, as I say, interested in football and, you know, he wants to know how Ian Wright's
getting on and how we're doing and whether we're going up. And he also knows that it does
matter to my…
It does make his life easier if Burnley…
…well, you know, if my mood… I think
sometimes your mood does affect your performance.
All right, I'd better let you go, that's great.
That's terrific mate, thanks very much.
Was that all right?
(Back in the studio) I called Alastair Campbell
"mate". He must have got to me.
Transcribed by
Phil Whalley
September 2000
