Alastair Campbell

“To me, marriage is partly a religious thing and I'm not religious.”

“In an ideal world, it would not take a film star to get the media focused on mental illness.”

“By asking the question 'Am I happy?,' and via the answer setting out what I mean by happiness, there is a political route that can be taken, by asking another question - 'Can politics deliver happiness, and should it try?'”

“I used to be very routine-based and the new thing in my life is not having a clear, full-time existence.”

“I will continue to help the political causes I believe in in any way I can.”

“The royal family's existence is a constant reminder of the hollowness of John Major's rhetoric, and idiotic statements by its leading members a constant boost to the republican cause. They're fine opening hospitals. It's when they open their mouths they get into trouble.”

“The thing about politicians in Britain is that they are out there, you can lobby them, get close to them, there are loads of ways you can protest against them, and booing is a pretty weak way of doing it.”

“I think I'm highly loveable.”

“We should confine booing in sports arenas to sport. I love a good boo as much as the next football fan.”

“The day of the daredevil reporter who refuses to see obstacles to getting the truth, and seeing it with his or her own eyes, seems to have died.”

“I had a happy childhood.”

“The media are obsessed with spin doctors and with portraying them as a bad thing, yet seem addicted to our medicine.”

“The pressures to get the story first, if wrong, are greater sometimes than the pressures to get the story right, if late.”

“My dad, Donald, was a vet and had a practice in Yorkshire. Cats and dogs were his bread and butter, but his greatest love was large animals.”

“I hold no candle for George Osborne whatsoever. He has no strategic skills, is a hopeless chancellor, has no idea how most people have to live and his policies are failing and hurting millions.”

“My public caricature - that of a self-confident alpha male - is only partly accurate.”

“May I share with you my earliest memory of a political row? It was with my mother, about the Queen - classic Freudian stuff, shrinks would say. I was eight, and refusing to watch the Queen's Christmas Day broadcast.”

“There has been a shift to what may be defined as a culture of negativity which goes well beyond coverage of politics.”

“There are many reasons for the decline in royal esteem. One is that so many of the royals are thick.”

“My closest friend, who died not long ago, is buried near Marx's grave in Highgate cemetery, so I see the gaggle of admirers laying roses at the foot of his tombstone regularly. I have never been tempted to leave flowers there myself. Great theories, shame about the practice. Marx did many things. But inventing class was not one of them.”