Under the wire again

Just got back from this evening's event, an audience with Alastair Campbell at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, mainly about his novel. Can't link to the event - it's vanished from the website (fame is evidently very brief on the South Bank). Anyway, it was fascinating. I didn't buy a copy of the book and get it signed, mainly because he'd have had to sign like a robot and not talk to anybody for me to get to the front of the queue before the last train; and given that the book is about mental illness and people in the Q&A were already sharing their stories, the signing was likely to last for some time; and given that I've already reserved it at the library...

He was in conversation with Fiona Phillips (am linking because, not having a telly and not having had one since the dawn of breakfast TV, have to admit I've never heard of her and had to look her up, but she was OK); and he did a slightly embarrassed short reading from the book "because I've been told to". He described writing a novel as the ideal occupation for a control-freak, but I imagine a book tour is something else... He was evidently far more comfortable speaking from the podium before the reading than in the armchairs afterwards...

The Q&A was very interesting. People were generally focused on the book and so on; but then right at the end, he broke right through Phillips's gentle format and got into press-secretary mode again, and asked for one-sentence questions, and a woman shouted out "Why didn't you stop the war?". So he wrote that down alongside all the other questions, and he answered it, and she heckled him back and he answered again...

I still don't know what to make of him, but it was a very interesting evening with probably the most mixed audience, both in terms of age, and sex, and race, that I've seen on the South Bank.