Mr Campbell stands up, then ducks the question

Tall, handsome, charming alpha male Alastair Campbell (reporting standards are improving, you see) relaunched his career last night in South Shields: from spin doctor to stand-up. The verdict? Needs work. He may say it's not stand-up but if he wants the £20,000 after-dinner slots we read about, the routine needs work.

This is not to say it didn't work. He was self-deprecating and funny enough to make sketch writers laugh, in a professional sort of way. His story about his first experience of government for example. His father was castrating piglets when the maternal sow smashed him against a wall so hard that he joined the Ministry of Agriculture. There isn't room to unpack that in this space.

After the jokes, his burden. Not to attack anyone but just to describe the reality we live in. The Daily Mail is a poison in our culture, parts of the media are conducting a campaign to "destroy the democratic link" between governed and government, and "having a great bloke doing a good job as Prime Minister is not bad". That's what needs work; it's dull.

The questions were livelier than he expected. "Speaking as a recovering alcoholic I get the feeling you're a dry drunk which is why you're so obsessive," said one. Mr Campbell skirted around that for some time without finding anything interesting to say.

A woman questioned the "integrity and honesty of Tony Blair and yourself" with reference to the dodgy dossier which was presented as a work of British intelligence. Mr Campbell answered in very great detail how his secretary had got involved in this story. The woman had been a little shaky asking this, and she didn't get an answer.

The question I wanted to ask him was this: "The degradation of standards you talk about that is so rife these days - was your great political scoop that John Major tucked his shirt into his underpants based on a single source or did you just make it up?" He must include that in his show when he comes to London.

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