ALASTAIR CAMPBELL confessed to a literature festival audience at the Centaur on Friday evening that even in New Zealand, to where he had scurried after his parting of the ways with Tony Blair, he was regarded as a political "antichrist."

The Cheltenham audience failed to warm to Mr Blair's charmless spin doctor, at the festival to promote his book, The Blair Years, for which he admitted he had given "red-pen privileges" before publication to Mr Blair amongst others - just how many others he did not reveal.

Interviewed by BBC presenter Francine Stock, Mr Campbell dodged her suggestion that HE was the bully when he mentioned dealing with bullies and bludgeoned his way past her questions on "presentation taking precedence over policy" during his tenure as the prime minister's media advisor.

Former Mirror journalist "I wasn't actually a very good journalist" Campbell made clear his contempt for journalists in general and Daily Mail journalists in particular, begging the question: was he the most suitable person for the post of No 10's media advisor in the first place?

The Cheltenham audience didn't think so and fired a host of hostile questions at him, particularly in relation to the Iraq War and the suicide of Dr Kelly, for which Campbell entirely blamed the BBC.

His answers were unconvincing at best and evasive for the most part but if nothing else the evening revealed that The Blair Years is as useful a historical document as the rewritten history books published in China during the Cultural Revolution.

Skip Walker