Former press secretary to Tony Blair and now a strategist and communicator, Keighley -born ALASTAIR CAMPBELL appeared this week on the BBC drama Accused, which dealt with mental illness. Campbell had a well-documented breakdown in the 1980s and has written candidly about mental health both in his current non-fiction book The Happy Depressive and his debut novel, 2010’s All In The Mind. Here he writes about his own experiences and how they have led to a major new TV production of his novel

 

On Tuesday, on BBC1 at 9pm, a largely indifferent public witnessed my professional acting debut.

Yes, professional. I was paid – modestly I think – to play myself in Episode 3 (I am also mentioned in Episode 4, he added proudly) of Jimmy McGovern’s latest dramas in the Accused series he makes with his RSJ partners Sita Williams and Roxy Spencer.

The critics, unsurprisingly perhaps, have tended to focus more on the fantastic, and rather deeper performances, of transvestite Sean Bean, and in last week’s ‘Mo’s story’, a stunning performance by Anne-Marie Duff.

This week was Stephen’s story. Just as stunning, really powerful, and if it was a surprise to some to see me in there, it will be a bigger surprise I think to see what a good serious actor Scouse comic John Bishop happens to be, playing Stephen’s dad.

In the episode Stephen is going through a lot of family-created mental anguish, and in his developing madness, he thinks that I am giving him advice about how to deal with it when he sees me on television.

The invitation to take part came out of the blue, and I assumed Jimmy McGovern, who I first met at a MIND charity event we were both supporting, was aware that when I went mad in the 1980s, and ended up in hospital, I was convinced Des Lynam was reading the football updates to me on Grandstand, in code, and that if I cracked the code, I would be allowed out. I spent hours doing anagrams of East Fife 3 Albion Rovers 2 and the like, to the seeming consternation of the nurses.

Then I got a phone call from an old pal, Chris Boffey. We chatted away and after a while he mentioned that he would be watching Taggart on TV later.

And then he added, very slowly, “You know the one… About the Scottish detective with a smile carved out of granite”.

At the time, I was in a Scottish hospital, having been sent there by two Scottish detectives not dissimilar to Taggart who had arrested me for my own safety because I was behaving oddly.

“Thanks Chris,” I said, quietly replacing the receiver, then cursing myself on realising that Des was a decoy, a waste of my time, and my friend was advising me that the real route to escape was via Taggart.

I had to study the smile, develop it, practice it, deliver it to the doctors and nurses, and I would be free. The next few hours seemed to drag on forever, but eventually Taggart was on. He didn’t smile much, but when he did, it was indeed a tough man’s smile.

I saw it three, maybe four times, went to the bathroom to practise in front of the mirror, back to bed, called for the nurse, told her I had cracked the code, did the smile…And then… “Eh, I wonder if we might not need to up yer dose, darling,” she said, another plan reduced to nothingness.

So when I arrived on set – how exciting does that sound? – and met Jimmy in the (equally exciting) location catering bus, I said I guess you asked me to do this because of Des Lynam and Taggart – at which point he looked at me a bit like the Paisley nurse had done in 1986.

Fair to say I have a small part, but a big role in the plot, which carries on without my face next week. I enjoyed it, tiny though it was, and the final product – the film as a whole – is really powerful, and next week’s in many ways even more so.

As a result of chatting to Jimmy, once he had recovered from my Des-Taggart psychotic recollections, we got chatting about mental illness and he made the extraordinary confession that he hadn’t yet read my first novel, All In The Mind, despite Stephen Fry’s observation that it was as brilliant a study of the human mind as he had read… Jimmy was about to go to Vietnam, and he said he would take it with him, and read it there… and I thought blah, blah, another luvvie, he’s got what he wants out of me, and I will never hear from him again.

Me of little faith. A few weeks later, he e-mailed to say he loved it. Then Sita and Roxy e-mailed to say Jimmy never enthused like he had about this, so they read it too, and the next thing they were sitting at my kitchen table, buying the rights for a TV adaptation.

So that’s why I am excited. I know lots of books get bought and films never get made. But Jimmy McGovern is Jimmy McGovern, and if you watch Accused, you will know that he, Sita and Roxy just get this stuff about what goes on inside troubled minds.

All In The Mind did well for a first novel, and I hope has played its own part in the campaign to get mental illness more out into the open. But a Jimmy McGovern adaptation will do a hell of a lot more, so I am not just excited but grateful.

I took a while before deciding to say yes when he first asked me to play myself. But at the time I was working on The Happy Depressive, and reading about the happiness experts’ view of happiness ingredients. One was ‘keep trying things you have never done before’.

So I said yes, and one thing has led to another, and I’ve got a feeling it’s going to be good – however badly my acting debut goes down with the critics who don’t blink.

  • A longer version of this piece appears on Alastair’s website, alastaircampbell.org.