Campbell the technophobe on politics and the web
Posted by
Julie Tomlin
on 21 February 2006 at 15:43
Tags: BBC, New Media, Online
Alastair Campbell admits to the delicious irony that as the man responsible for New Labour’s communications strategy he “was in the dark ages when it came to technology“.
On Andrew Marr’s Radio 4 programme “Start the Week” (RealAudio) and then in an article for AOL, Campbell admits he never uses a computer in all the time he worked for Tony Blair and would write responses to emails in long hand for his assistants type them up.
And while the publication of emails was viewed as a ground-breaking use of the internet during the Hutton Inquiry into the death of Government scientist David Kelly, Campbell admits that his computer illiteracy would become an issue:
“There were emails galore to be published, but none from me, just a few sent on my behalf by my long-suffering PA or one of her team. At one point during my appearance to give evidence, I had to explain who all these people were who sent emails “on behalf of Alastair Campbell.”
These days Campbell has a blackberry, but recalls how he hit the wrong key when joking with a friend “that he should tell the BBC to ‘**** off and cover something important for once’, only to discover that I sent it not to my friend but to the BBC, thereby providing Newsnight with a lead story to salivate over on an otherwise quiet news day”.
