Both men got to enjoy their soccer.

Cheering for Blair rather than for Burnley is, however, a more apt description of Alastair Campbell's life over the last 13 years. In the recent past I have seen him humiliate a seasoned journalist with an expletive-filled answer to what was, in truth, a very silly question.

And I have also seen him tease tabloid reporters with titbits of insider scandal that incomplete could not be published. To many in the media, and plenty in political life, he's the manipulator of headlines and news agendas, a man whose modus oprandi has corrupted politics. A cursory glance at the coverage his new book has been receiving shows he has many enemies, most of them journalists. But seen another way, Campbell did a superb job for his political boss as the British Labour Party was transformed into the natural party of government at Westminster . . .

and in the process succeeded in making a fundamental impact on life in the UK and beyond.

Iraq will always dominate any assessment of Blair's decade in Downing Street and Campbell's newly published diaries give plenty of space to the decision to oust Saddam Hussein and the ensuing fallout. But just as Blair's tenure deserves a more rounded assessment, there's much more than Iraq in Campbell's book. Sitting in the Merrion Hotel last week, Campbell has no difficulty selling his book. The pitch is, after all, a variation of the message he has been promoting for the last 13 years.

"Tony will be seen as an exceptional prime minister, " he says. "He's left a massive legacy."

The job offer to work as Blair's press secretary came in July 1994.

Campbell's family and close friends were against him accepting the position from the newly elected Labour leader. He had overcome an alcohol-induced breakdown some years previously and he has by his own admission "a very addictive personality". But he was yearning for a new challenge. After leaving Cambridge in the early 1980s, Campbell busked around Europe playing bagpipes and writing short stories for a softporn magazine. But he made his name as political editor with the Mirror Group of newspapers and was exceptionally well-connected with Neil Kinnock's British Labour Party. He championed Tony Blair for the party leadership in 1994, moving well beyond the remit of a newspaper reporter. "If the truth be told I was getting pretty fed up with journalism. I was bored and looking for a way out, " he admits.

The newspaper reporter drove back to London from a family holiday in France in the summer of 1994 mulling over Blair's offer. "I had two images in my mind and both were the day after the general election. In one, John Major is going back into No 10 as prime minister and I'm in the press area wondering if I could have made a difference and stopped him winning. And in the other image Tony's going in as prime minister and I'm watching him thinking, I could have been part of that. Both were saying 'do the job'."

Campbell took the job and the ruthless professionalism he brought to the promotion and protection of Tony Blair led some pundits to dub the former journalist 'the real deputy prime minister'.

His new book, The Blair Years:

Extracts from the Alastair Campbell Diaries, has been garnering acres of media coverage. Pacy and wellwritten, it is a must read for anyone with even a vague interest in recent British and Irish history.

The diaries show just how the relationship with Blair was unique, with Campbell having the type of access and influence few ministers, let alone advisers, in any previous British government had with any previous prime minister.

Campbell was very powerful.

But he says he accepted his role was as an advisor not a politician.

"I never thought for a minute I could have done it better than Tony. I didn't have the complete skill set. I was probably doing the right job at the right time." Many diary entries relating to Gordon Brown have been omitted, while, he says, "Among the really big cuts is the stuff abut the media." In a sense, Campbell will always be defined by the media. He accepts that the Blair government, in its early days, obsessed about the media. "There was a point where we'd sit around and worry about what the media would say if he went on a holiday here or to such a restaurant theref" The communications world changed dramatically in Blair's 13 years as Labour leader. Campbell led the challenge to these changes and what he describes as a "culture of negativity" pursued by many elements of the media.

"Tony had more negative media than anyone in the history of British politics, " he says, although as a former journalist he should have been familiar with the tabloid's relentless quest for information about well-known figures.

He now regrets Blair did not move more strongly on media ownership, privacy laws and a press complaints commission with greater independence from the media itself.

Among the politicans he admires is Bertie Ahern . . . who did the honours at the Irish publication of the book in Dublin last week. Others on the list include Bill Clinton and George Bush as well as sporting figures like Alex Ferguson (a personal friend) and David Beckham. "These people get hit all over the place [by the media] but they just keep going on."

Campbell left Blair's paid circle of advisors in Downing Street in 2003 in the midst of controversy.

The headlines were dominated by the Hutton inquiry fallout over the death of scientist David Kelly, BBC's claims that a government dossier about Iraqi weapons had been 'sexed up' and Campbell's own role in the affair, having moved from spin doctor to being part of the story itself. With Blair now also gone from Downing Street, Campbell is a member of the 'former' club in New Labour.

He accepts that Gordon Brown won't be asking him back. "The relationship is complicated. I go back further with Gordon than I do with Tony. I'd say there's a mutual respect and I desperately want him to do well."

And Campbell's involvement in the next Westminster election?

"I'll probably do something even if it's just locally and I'll do media stuff, " he says. His local MP is Glenda Jackson, a former minister and arch critic of Tony Blair. "So you won't be doing too much locally, " I say. Campbell laughs.