ALASTAIR CAMPBELL: Mental Health, Politics & Surviving the Spotlight

Guest: Alastair Campbell — writer, podcaster, political communicator and mental health campaigner. Former Press Secretary and Director of Communications to Prime Minister Tony Blair. Author of Living Better: How I Learned to Survive Depression (highly recommended — he reads the audiobook himself). Global Ambassador for Australians for Mental Health. Co-founder of the All-Party Parliamentary Campaign for Equality in Mental Health.

How this happened: Lee was at a construction industry commercial conference in London when Alastair was the guest speaker. During Q&A, Lee stuck his hand up and asked him on the podcast in front of 200 people. As Alastair noted, it's very difficult to say no in that situation. They then accidentally walked to the tube station together, during which Alastair stopped to photograph a tree for his Tree of the Day Instagram series. Lee was standing directly behind him when he took it.

Topics covered:

Mental health — the personal story

• Alastair's first encounter with mental illness — a neighbour called Stanley in the Hebrides when he was eight, watching police and an ambulance arrive
• His brother's schizophrenia diagnosis while serving in the army — a massive shock for the family, Alastair staying with him in a military psychiatric hospital
• His own breakdown in the 1980s — and how it led to decades of campaigning, writing and documentaries
• His BBC documentary My Depression and Me (2019) — made to break down stigma and share what he's learned
• The honest admission: "I still get depression but I've learned how to deal with it better" — the goal is living better, not being cured

The 1-10 scale

• Alastair's daily mental health check-in: 1 is unrealistic happiness, 10 is suicidal — he aims to be at 3-4
• If he wakes up at 7: exercise even when he doesn't want to, phone people and admit he's struggling, listen to music instead of news, read a book instead of papers, drink water, eat well
• The tool doesn't always work — but ticking things off through the day creates momentum
• His younger self would absolutely have called this "hippy dippy bullshit" — he doesn't care

The state of mental health services

• Attitudes have improved in 10 years, awareness has improved — but services have gone backwards
• The UK has a mental health crisis service, not a mental health service — you get a bed after jumping off a building, but not when you ask a GP for counselling
• Sunak's "sick note culture" speech — exploiting a problem rather than addressing it
• Child and adolescent mental health services in crisis across most of the country
• The bowel cancer screening analogy: preventative medicine works — so why not preventative mental health?
• His one policy proposal: mental health hubs in schools and workplaces, plus mandatory mental health first aid training

Suicide and construction

• Lee shares statistics from a workplace suicide prevention workshop: construction workers are four times more likely to die by suicide than any other sector — 507 construction workers in 2021, 502 of them men
• Alastair's analysis: male-dominated sectors, access to means, the pressure not to show vulnerability
• Politics as a laboratory for mental ill health — constant judgment, social media abuse, alcohol culture, family guilt

The book that saved a life

• A man had planned his suicide — where, when, how — then picked up Living Better from his bedside table and read it
• He wrote to Alastair to say it had stopped him
• "I've not met the guy. I don't know him. Hopefully one day I will."

Lee's own reflection

• Lee's cancer diagnosis gave him permission to talk openly about mental health — the cancer validated it, made it acceptable
• Before the diagnosis, he wouldn't have been doing a podcast about mental health
• "I almost needed the cancer as a vehicle or an excuse"
• Alastair: "I completely understand that. We used to call it the Big C because we didn't want to confront what it meant. Same with mental health."

The Maradona story

• Soccer Aid, Old Trafford, Alastair in the starting line-up
• 6am, both unable to sleep — Maradona jet-lagged, wanting a kick-about
• A jobsworth groundsman reluctantly let them in
• 40 minutes on the pitch, just the two of them
• Maradona scored a goal, ran round the empty stadium celebrating
• They lost. Alastair got dropped for the second one

Quickfire round:

• Will Trump be the next president? No (recorded pre-2024 election)
• Will Sunak be the next PM? No (correct)
• Will Boris or Farage lead the Tories if they lose? No
• Burnley to survive the drop or Scotland to qualify from their Euros group? Scotland (Burnley went down — both predictions correct)
• VAR: no — works in rugby and cricket because it's transparent, becomes part of the spectacle; in football it's shrouded in mystery and still getting decisions wrong
• The Apprentice (charity version): yes. Strictly or I'm A Celebrity: never, would be awful for his mental health and his credibility
• Homemade bagpipe in Athens, photographed and posted on Instagram — AI identified it as "a homemade weapon or self-defence tool"

Post-episode chat between Lee and Paul:

• Lee applying Alastair's scale to himself — has been a 3, fairly manic, spinning plates, hoping it doesn't end in a crash
• Currently week 7 of Couch to 5K — up to 25 minutes
• Ice baths happening regularly, much to Paul's disgust
• Paul's wellbeing dot tracking system — good for accountability, reveals patterns (meditation and water: zero dots all week)
• Paul playing Nazi interrogator Robert Mohr in a theatre production — "just being a Nazi is so draining" — opening at the Traverse in Edinburgh
• MCR Pathways mentoring programme in Glasgow schools — Paul mentoring vulnerable young people in deprived areas, facing potential funding cuts from Glasgow City Council
• Ian McNabb returning to Ian McNabb's Email Corner
• Coming up: the menopause episode with Charlotte the bee lady, Cam Cooney (Australian meditator, definitely not Kofi Annan), Dr Megan (paediatric clinical psychologist and trauma specialist)

Referenced:

• Living Better: How I Learned to Survive Depression — Alastair Campbell (read the audiobook, he reads it himself)
• My Depression and Me — BBC documentary, 2019
• Soccer Aid — Old Trafford, 2006
• All-Party Parliamentary Campaign for Equality in Mental Health — co-founded by Alastair Campbell
• Australians for Mental Health — Alastair's ambassadorial role
• MCR Pathways — mentoring programme in Glasgow schools
• Maggie's Centres — referenced by Paul in the context of his fundraising run
• The Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh — Paul's show, 4th-6th June
• Tree of the Day — Alastair's Instagram feature. Lee was there for the photo

Note: Recorded during the 2024 UK election campaign — political references are in that context.