Does the scale help? I find it does. Ruling out one and 10 helps, but I have definitely been at nine. In Australia recently, where I was announced as a global ambassador for Australians for Mental Health, a road transport official talked to me about the official suicide statistics. He said the real figures were totally underestimated “because so many road traffic deaths, which are classed as accidents, are actually almost certainly suicides.” That really resonated with me. These are difficult questions to ask and to answer and I have agonised over them all, while blaming myself for not being able to help until Alastair agreed to see a psychiatrist rather than try to cure himself. This watershed moment followed a terrifying incident on Hampstead Heath when fear, anger, helplessness, loss of purpose, self-loathing – I will never know which – caused him to start punching himself in the face. Fiona thought we were still going through a period of intense recrimination – she blamed me for bringing so much pressure into the family, I blamed her for forcing me out of the role I felt I was made for – was really trying her best and suggested we go for a walk to talk things over. Again.

Some of the frameworks Campbell presents seem quite basic but can be very useful to structure one’s thinking (like the OST - Objective - Strategy - Tactics; referencing Obama campaign’s Respect, Empower, Include framework; or roles of Leaders - Warriors - Talents within teams), others are more motivational and akin to a self-help guide. But that is fine - Campbell always shows how he personally uses the techniques to get through his own struggles, rather than saying they are a mental health panacea. What follows is, in essence, a reprise of what I heard earlier, with the addition of a few knobs and whistles. The audience claps and cheers when Stewart describes how he once refused to be bullied by George Osborne, and laughs uproariously at footage of him determinedly explaining that, no, a flood defence had not been breached; the water had simply come over it. Campbell talks everyone through his Burnley ties, which are, after all, a great deal more sensible than the Privy Counsellor’s uniform Stewart wore to the coronation; there is also some peculiar sporran talk (both men own more than one). Campbell then plays, by way of a finale, a lament he has composed for the lost of Northern Ireland on his bagpipes, a tune he transmogrifies into Happy Birthday in honour of someone in the balcony. Though there is a lot of sadness and grief in what I am saying, I hope you also find… hope. The sub-title of my book is important – Living Better: How I Learned to Survive Depression. It is about how I survived depression. The thinking and exploring I have done in writing it has undoubtedly helped me add to the strategies I deploy to stay, most of the time, pretty well. But I also hope the book serves a broader purpose, to help change the lens on the way we think, speak and act in relation to mental illness.

Campbell did say that the myth of people with psychotic illnesses either being creative geniuses or murderous needed to be dispelled. Whilst his work does much to dislodge the latter, I worry about the former. He contextualises his successes with recourse to his 'addictive personality' and 'workoholism' so not sure if that rather gives weight to the idea of his being a creative genius rather than discrediting it.

Part autobiography, part mental-health guide, Campbell’s writing blurs the line between personal experience and fact-finding expedition. There are attempts made consistently throughout this piece to do away with the taboo of talking about your mental health. For that, Campbell should be commended, especially after generations of “manning up” or “putting the right foot forward”, he attempts to undo some of that damage by giving thoughtful recollections of what addiction, depression, anxiety, and workaholism entail.

How do you start that conversation to get to the truth? Where to get help when the behaviour spills over into something more dangerous and toxic? How do you persuade someone you love, but can also recoil from and resent, to accept that need? Mental ill-health is far less tangible than physical disease. How do you know it isn’t you that is deluded? The dynamo I normally feel 24/7 whirring inside me is switched off. Literally, you feel as if there is a power cut. Energy gone. Power gone. Desire gone. Motivation gone. The ability to feel anything other than the numbing pain the cloud has brought into you – gone. Everything gone, gone, all gone. Our politics is a mess. Leaders who can't or shouldn't be allowed to lead. Governments that lie, and seek to undermine our democratic values. Policies that serve the interests of the privileged few. It's no surprise that so many of us feel frustrated, let down and drawn to ask, ' But what can I do?' He is, looked at one way, extremely parochial, obsessed with – passionate about, if you prefer – the Labour party to a degree that can be unnerving even to other devoted members (this, he tells me, easily survived his expulsion from the party in 2019 for voting Liberal Democrat in the European elections on the grounds of their support for a second Brexit referendum). Outside it, football is his principal other interest (though he makes time for park runs and cold water swimming). He’s also a bruiser: tribal, pugnacious, overly confident, and apt to lose his temper – as he did in the middle of a discussion about Brexit on the BBC’s Newsnight only the other evening.

In chapters entitled Resist Cynicism and Develop a Campaigning Mindset, he cajoles and pleads younger people from every sector of society to overcome their disillusion, and to adopt the Obama mindset of Yes We Can. I know my depression will always be a part of me. I’ve accepted that now. I still have suicidal thoughts and dark days, and I always will. But at least now I can recognise them, I feel them coming on, and I can deal with them better than I used to. There may one day be a vaccine for Covid-19. But I doubt there will ever be a vaccine or a cure for depression. It is part of the human condition; it is certainly part of mine. I’ve spent decades learning to live with that. And now, through trial and error, through medication and therapy, through highs and lows, above all through grief and love, I have finally got to know my enemy. I live better for having dealt with it. And I deal with it, through living better. I hope that for some of you out there, this book can help you do the same.Like The Happy Depressive I think this is one book that will stay with me, both on my shelf and as a supportive reminder. Aside from that, it's given me different perspectives to think about in relation to my own experiences of mental illness and how I've been attempting to approach it. meh. vb peaks andma kolm tärni, sest oli täiesti loetav raamat ja midagi polnud valesti jne, aga ma ootasin midagi muud ja/või midagi enamat. I find it difficult to believe that somebody with Campbell’s career history and behavioural tendencies, and who has spent so much time in the company of mental health professionals, has never had it suggested to him that narcissism might be at least part of the explanation for his mental health struggles. And yet the word narcissism doesn’t feature once in the book, which leaves me wondering whether he has been more selective in what he exposes about himself than he purports to have been. And as soon as doubts start to creep in about the reliability of the narrator, the whole concept of the book starts to feel quite deeply flawed. Campbell splits his book into two halves: the first focuses on what has gone wrong in our politics; the second on what can be done to fix it. And for Alastair Campbell, that answer lies largely with young people.