Why did Alastair attack me so ferociously? And why doesn’t the BBC employ him as an interviewer?

Threatening letters on 10 Downing Street-headed notepaper are scary and I admit taking fright. My autobiography, Chance Witness, was on the verge of publication, and I was heading for the Grapes in Narrow Street for lunch with a Foreign Office friend when my mobile phone rang. Would I call my editor’s office urgently? I did. They read me a letter from the Prime Minister’s press office, signed by a member of staff there in the name of Alastair Campbell, and faxed through to the Times for publication. As I listened to the letter my blood ran cold.

Its more gratuitously abusive remarks did not survive the negotiation which sometimes occurs in these cases, so I will not quote all of what, on 26 September, the Prime Minister’s director of communications and strategy intended for publication. What did finally appear concerned an excerpt from my book which had just appeared in the Times. I had described sharing a car with Alastair during the Labour leadership elections in 1994, when he (then assistant editor of the now defunct Today newspaper) and I were going to BBC Millbank to interrogate Tony Blair for Breakfast News. We discussed questions for the interview.

I recall (I wrote) Alastair’s persuading me to doubt the professional wisdom of tackling Mr Blair on why, as an opponent of opt-out schools, he had sent his son Euan (I say) to the elite London Oratory. Alastair (I report) advised me that personal questioning on a family matter would be thought unprofessional and below the belt. His advice impressed me. I cannot recall (I wrote) whether I tackled Blair on schooling while toning down the personal side, or dropped it altogether.

That, at least, is what was in my book. But Campbell’s letter looked devastating to this account. It pointed out that at the time Euan still had a year’s primary schooling ahead.