ALASTAIR Campbell used to make the news and this week he’s back in the headlines with David Cameron accusing him of falsifying documents while in government.

So at Harrogate theatre he began by inviting the PM to provide the evidence, adding it will be a long wait – given there is none.

Always a figure of controversy, Tony Blair’s spin doctor was happy to reveal life behind closed doors at number 10. He was slick, polished but utterly loyal to the Labour Party – and in particular Blair.

Campbell told us why Gordon Brown was “brilliant but impossible”. Someone who underestimated the step-up required to become PM or the scale of the job.

But he saved his best anecdote to the end. John Prescott was on the phone, he’d just thumped a ‘bloke’.

“What sort of bloke?” asked Campbell. “Just a bloke”… “Why did you do it?”

“Because he were a prat,” replied the Deputy Prime Minister.

And in a candid moment Campbell told his audience that having a nervous breakdown was probably the best thing that ever happened to him. He admitted his depression manifested itself, not in a manic way, but in a series of highs where he was full of creativity – and lows, where his “gloomy Presbyterian side” took over.

Not surprisingly, Rebekah Brooks and the News International phone hacking saga was the subject of a number of questions.

“Is she culpable”, Campbell was asked? “There are not many big stories on a weekly paper,” he replied.

“When I was a journalist, the editor would always ask ‘are we sure, and ‘where did it come from’?”

The tell-tale look of a seasoned media manipulator completed his answer.

It was a topical and fascinating evening with one of the most enigmatic characters of recent times.