Alastair Campbell Is Not A Celebrity

The last time I checked, Alastair Campbell was neither a legendary footballer nor a top celebrity. Yet he has been invited to take part in this year's Soccer Aid football match as a member of the Rest of The World team against an England All Stars.

If Campbell qualifies as a celebrity simply through the amount of media exposure he has received, then by the same basis Ian Huntley and Harold Shipman also fall under the celebrity umbrella. Campbell's invitation to take part in the Soccer Aid event is bizarre, given that many people still convulse with anger at the sight on their tv screens of a man so inextricably linked to the false information peddled in the build-up to the Iraq War.

Campbell brings nothing to the table. Labour's former Head of Propaganda is not popular, doesn't have any kind of following and, to my knowledge, no Alastair Campbell fan club exists. He is best remembered as the man who googled "WMDs", then cut and pasted the search results into a word document and described it as an intelligence dossier. Nobody who watches this football match will be encouraged to pick up the phone and make a donation by the sight of Alastair Campbell jogging across their screen. His participation denies someone else, a genuine public figure with real pulling power who could attract donations, the opportunity to take part.