By Campbell:
"Friends have suggested that I am the least qualified person to talk about happiness, because I am often down, and sometimes profoundly depressed. But I think that's where my qualification comes from. Because to know happiness, it helps to know unhappiness."
—06/01/12 [1]
"How can a country be happy when two million people a day fork out their hard earned cash to buy The Daily Mail?"
—02/02/12 [2]
"I booked a cab the other day, and saw The Daily Mail lying on the seat next to the driver. 'Sorry,' I said 'you can have me in the cab, or you can have the Mail, but you can’t have both.'"
—17/10/09 [3]
"I frankly have reached the point where I genuinely don't care what the papers say about me at all. I have never sued a paper... most of the bile, I couldn't give a damn."
—30/11/11 [4]
"I would rather die in a vat of boiling oil than take a penny from Obergruppenfuhrer Paul Dacre, the Mail's presiding evil not-so-genius."
—17/10/09 [5]
"Let me just try to describe what it's like, right. You wake up at, I dunno, sometime before 6am and you read that morning's media brief and within it there are probably about 30 things that you know are wrong or that you decide are unfair and most things you just completely ignore and some things you've got to respond. You maybe turn on the radio and you hear something that you think is a misrepresentation of your position. So you think, 'Do I sort it or don't I sort it?' and most times you don't. By about 6.30, quarter to seven, I'm probably getting my first calls from politicians, because it will be somebody going on to do GMTV on this or Today on that and they're saying, 'I'm slightly worried about being asked about this thing in the Telegraph, what's the line? What am I supposed to say? What's the facts and da da da da?' and then I maybe get out the house at seven and I used to run into work and regularly get interrupted about three or four times, and then get into the office and I'd have my first meeting at eight usually with Tony, then the first meeting that I chair at 8.30 and then to a round of meetings before the 11 o'clock, and then the briefings and your day goes on and it never ever stops and then you get home, say you get home at 10pm at night, and you get a phone call saying somebody who was going to be on Newsnight has pulled out because they've gone to a dinner and they forgot they were double booked and you then phone round to get ministers on."
—08/03/04 [6]
"The media are obsessed with spin doctors and with portraying them as a bad thing, yet seem addicted to our medicine."
—[8]
"There are many reasons for the decline in royal esteem. One is that so many of the royals are thick."
—10/05/93 [9]
"There is something in me that makes me see things through. You don't bloody ditch and dump."
—[10]
From The Daily Mail:
"Campbell has developed a reputation as the hard man of politics over 20-odd years of bullying, swaggering, scheming and score-settling. But as time passes this reputation is pretty laughable. He seems a desperately insecure figure, albeit one who is surrounded by darkness."
—Miles Goslett, 21/06/12 [11]
"Faced with the prospect of bumping into a clown grinning at me in an alley on a dark night or bumping into Alastair Campbell grinning at me in an alley on a dark night, I would definitely plump for the clown."
—Craig Brown, 15/05/10 [12]
"Given what Campbell has done, it is a wonder that he has the gall to appear in public at all — and a greater wonder still that he should be regularly given a platform by an indulgent BBC, an organisation he once tried to destroy."
—Stephen Glover, 25/09/13 [13]
"I can scarcely be accused of wanting to get my own back at Mr Campbell, since over the years I have written many articles representing him as an overbearing bully who helped to politicise the Civil Service and who repeatedly took short cuts with the truth."
—Stephen Glover, 11/07/07 [14]
"Shameless, swaggering and STILL lying."
—Headline, 13/01/10 [15]
By others:
"He frightened me because he was very charming. And interesting, not because of anything he said but because of the way he was. Some of the more outlandish elements of our character suddenly fell into place and didn't seem so outlandish any more [...] He was a more rounded person, not just a pitbull spin doctor, an amusing, entertaining person. Good company. That didn't mean other accusations about him didn't make sense."
—Peter Capaldi, 25/07/11 [16]
"He is a very powerful, very clever, bullying man and most of them [politicians] are terrified of him."
—Clare Short, July 2003
"Here I was, sitting in a car with the man who sexed up the dossier that took us to war in Iraq. Actually he was rather nice in person, but so was Hitler. Alastair was discreet and world weary, like a retired gym teacher. He seemed big, badly dressed and sexy, and his sad eyes looked medicated. Maybe taking us to war had exhausted him. Being too close to power had eaten a chunk out of him. At any rate he wasn't going to headbang anyone on this gig, although he did have a big nobbly nose that was made for aggression or at least cunnilingus. It was going to get bigger as he got older. But the old Blair thug was no longer there. Not even a whisper. Thank God."
—Rupert Everett, Vanished Years (2012)
"If Campbell writes more novels, I'll certainly read them [...] But I can't get rid of this niggling feeling that the talents of this fiercely driven, complex, proud and, yes, decent, man might be better used in making Britain a better place. There are lots of novels in the world. There aren't that many Alastair Campbells."
—Christina Patterson, 31/10/08 [17]
"In a good mood, Alastair Campbell was fun; in a bad mood, he was Ivan the Terrible, Freddy Krueger and Chopper Harris all rolled into one."
—Jeremy Vine, It's All News To Me (2012)
"Well over six foot, sinewy and blessed with square Action Man good looks, Campbell has always been physically imposing. Now, in his tracksuit bottoms and polo shirt, he oozes the energetic well-being of someone who does not spend the daylight hours under fluorescent strip lights. He looks easily younger than his 46 years. His bearing is alpha-male to the point of self-parody: he sprawls in an armchair, legs as wide apart as they will go, unapologetically adjusting his crotch periodically. It is easy to see why so many women fancy him, why many men want to be in his gang - and why a large portion of the British public detests him. Since leaving Downing Street, where he had never used a computer, he has mastered email and carries a BlackBerry everywhere. Each time it buzzes he breaks off to check the latest message, a subtle, information age display of power."
—Ian Katz, 08/03/04 [18]
