Campbell diaries: what do you think?

Alastair Campbell has scathing insults for his sparring partners in the press as revealed in his diaries published today.

A quick trawl through the 750 odd pages has revealed that some journalists will not find surfing the comprehensive index for mentions of themselves to be a nice experience.

According to Campbell, media commentator Stephen Glover is a ‘deeply unpleasant man”, columnist Simon Jenkins ‘a total wanker’and Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre simply ‘evil”.

Perhaps most significant in journalistic terms are Campbell’s revelations over the way Tony Blair courted Rupert Murdoch and the direct sway Murdoch then apparently had over his then editors – Stuart Higgins at The Sun and Peter Stothard at The Times.

Update: The Guardian has some responses from Matthew “little shit” Parris, Andrew “behaving oddly” Marr, Piers “absolutely fuming” Morgan, and Seumas Milne, George “FT had gone mad” Parker.

The Independent, meanwhile, says Campbell has told its readers that Tony Blair should not have singled out the Indy out in his “feral beasts” speech about the media:

“I certainly think the Mail is the worst of the lot. So does he, but perhaps he didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of knowing it,” he said. And Mr Campbell admitted: “He and I had our differences from time to time, and one was that I felt he should have done more earlier on to highlight the culture of negativity, and the impact of the changing news media not just on politics but on what we are and how we feel as a country.”

The Scotsman notes that Campbell referred to Scottish media as “whingeing Jock journos”. The paper also gleefully reports that it is “mentioned five times in Alastair Campbell’s diaries, mostly as a source of irritation for scuppering the spin doctor’s best-laid plans.”

What do you think of the Campbell diaries, or of the man himself?