Hello and welcome to the TIFO Football Podcast.

I'm Joe Devine and today I'm delighted to be joined by Alistair Campbell.

Alistair was Tony Blair's press secretary in the late 90s.

He was Labor's Director of Communications in the early 2000s.

He is editor-at-large of the new European.

You're right for GQ.

You are an advisor to the people's vote campaign. You've just started a podcast with your daughter's gross, football, feminism and everything in between. You've published 15 books and also you were a Burnley fan. Yeah. I'd say the one consistent thing through all of that is the Burnley bit. Not just a bandwagon jumper, no. No, no, no, no. i have seen us go from the very top to the very

bottom and a long way back again how many games do you think you've been to i've no idea um how often

do you get to go pretty much most games yeah most games home and away uh last season i don't know

missed about eight maybe um that's a lot of games yeah and I've been to virtually every ground. There's a few I've not been to because they're new. But, you know, you remember we were, so when I first saw Burnley, we were reigning league champions. And then 25 years later, we needed to win the last game of the season to stay in the league. So I've seen them up and down all the leagues. I think there's only us and wolves that can say we've won all four divisional titles. I saw you say that on the G. I think that's true. You're recycling old content now. I know, but it's like it's a fact that I, you know, I've never checked. I was trying to guess when you said that. So it's the only you and Wolves have won all four of the League Division. I was thinking Leicester maybe, but no. No. That was my guess. No, I don't think so. Anyway, so yeah, so it means I have been to most places. What about when you were in government? Did you get to go very often?

Yeah, I got to a lot of games.

Yeah?

Yeah.

Is that allowed when you're in government?

Yeah.

I mean, I think it's as far as I was concerned, it wasn't just allowed.

It was, I should encourage, I encourage myself, because I think it's, I think particularly

if you're kind of it, in a really full on set set up having something to escape to and and it was I mean there was

every now and again Tony Blair would get a bit hacked off seeing you know what are you going

to take them off to another football match for but it was my way of kind of partly of staying

connected partly it was a it was a release and you know, you've got eight hours travelling.

You can get through quite a lot of work.

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