Eddie Izzard’s brilliant broadcast on brilliant Britain
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My Latest Book
Living Better (Paperback)
How I Learned To Survive Depression
by
Alastair Campbell
"Superbly readable, supremely useful. This book could save lives."
– Stephen Fry
LIVING BETTER is Alastair Campbell’s honest, moving and life affirming account of his lifelong struggle with depression. It is an autobiographical, psychological and psychiatric study, which explores his own childhood, family and other relationships, and examines the impact of his professional and political life on himself and those around him. But it also lays bare his relentless quest to understand depression not just through his own life but through different treatments. Every bit as direct and driven, clever and candid as he is, this is a book filled with pain, but also hope - he examines how his successes have been in part because of rather than despite his mental health problems - and love. His partner of forty years, Fiona Millar, writes a moving afterword on how she too has learned to live with his depression.
Depression is the predominant mental health problem worldwide - it is estimated that 1 in 6 people in the past week experienced a common mental health problem and major depression is thought to be the second leading cause of disability worldwide. LIVING BETTER is a call to arms and an extraordinary memoir in one compelling and inspiring narrative. This is a book that really could save lives.
Alastair Campbell says: ‘We all know someone with depression. There is barely a family untouched by it. We may be talking about it more than we did, back in the era of 'boys don't cry' - they did you know - and when a brave face or a stiff upper lip or a best foot forward was seen as the only way to go. But we still don't talk about it enough. There is still stigma, and shame, and taboo. There is still the feeling that admitting to being sad or anxious makes us weak. It took me years, decades even to get to this point, but I passionately believe that the reverse is true and that speaking honestly about our feelings and experiences (whether as a depressive or as the friend or relative of a depressive) is the first and best step on the road to recovery.’
Living Better Interviews
Dear Eddie, How come the gap between rich and poor has grown so much after 13 years of Labour? You obviously know all about New Labour so please let the poor public know what cunnning plan Maggie (!!) used to force New Labour to make the rich richer and the poor poorer … or could it be that you have been drinking the Kool Aid? Stand up for Old Labour, not Old Cliches!
How about all New Labour’s achievements? Just shut up, hater.
Hey Peter, It is the big bang of Maggie Thatcher turned our banks to gamble our pensions and savings for their own betterment. Not the Labour’s policies. It’s the successive Tory governments who brought misery and unemployment to the miners and the workers of the Northeast.
Now they are getting their allies in the big businesses to sign a letter so that we ordinary citizens will be frightened into voting for them so that the big Wolf of bankers and big businesses can further ruin our lives. Wake up my fellow citizens in marginal seats to Tories conspiracy so that they reward their masters in big business with profits and award themselves fat consultanies.
Vote Labour and Gordon Brown. He is a decent man and he has a job to finish.
If there was any doubt left, it’s now clear that Murdoch is firmly pulling Adam Boulton’s strings. Dark room, Adam. Lie down. Deep breaths. And dream, just dream, of a Tory government attacking the BBC and our public services. There, that feels better, doesn’t it? Pay rise on the way.
Tim, check you facts and stop banging on about Maggie – Gordon Brown deregulated the banks and allowed them to take larger risks. He took power from The Bank of England and gave that power to the FSA. The FSA has been taken flak for not policing the banks properly and it has been strongly suggested that the Bank of England is better placed to understand and evaluate systemic risk in the banking sector. On another subject, it is interesting that Mervyn King has just come out strongly in support of the Conservatives cuts. King was appointed by Gordon Brown.
Thanks for keeping my spirits up with this blog. At least the Lib Dems have been exposed for what they are: tories with a conscience (of sorts). They’ll never be able to play the virgin-innocence card again.
I LOVE Alistair
I agree with the Mirror article in how we will miss Gordon Brown more than we think. I found him to be a man of susbstance whose main concern was Britian, not imperialist ambitions abroad. I do not need to mention the massive achievements he made, suffice to say that the UK is a much better than it was 13 years ago and his legacy is embedded into whatever any new govt. does. He may not look as flashy as the new couple on the Downing Street garden to the media, and the media did play a savage plot in bringing him down. I think he was the Labour we wanted; I was put off Labour with Tony Blair and the spin that rolled of his tongue with inhuman and artificial language largely borrowed from George Bush (when it came to Iraq and Palestine). It was pretty sickening in fact and it was so refreshing to hear Gordon Brown’s first speech as Prime Minister.
We have not talked enough about the loss of Gordon Brown, why is this so? I think he was the best PM we had in years are not likely to find an equal for years to come, especially considering his modest and principled background as well as the substance of his policy. Blair was busy with Bush abroad whilst Brown managed domestic policy and the economy.
My main question is that do you think Gordon Brown could have won an election if he called it earlier on (within a year or so of taking office as the popularity ratings did surge)? Was this a catastrophic mistake? If so, it is not a point that has been highlighted enough.
I feel that he has been deprived of the mandate he so wanted and coming to think of it now, the mandate he deserved to do even more for the country and bring about a fairer Britain.
The way the situation has turned out, I think more and more people like myself who did not show much bother early on enough, now wish they did more to keep Gordon Brown in.
Yes we will miss Gordon and a lot sooner than most people will know.
Before him the best Prime minister for me was Ted Heath (for the youngsters a Tory), why because if it was not for him Rolls Royce RB211 aero engine would not have made it to the production line and Rolls Royce would not be around today.
Where are we now, well for those of us who remember 1979, Margaret Thatcher took on the civil service and crushed them before doing the same for the miners, the result a financial and service economy that went down the tube in 2007.
What next, well we saw it yesterday, cancellation of infrastructure and job creation projects that replicates the Thatcher years where ITV published every day the companies that went to the wall because she, who never turned, turned her back on our industrial base and our economy.
The younger generations did not know what they were doing when they voted in Margater Thatcher replicates recently, God help us because round the corner is increasing job losses, high intertest rates (1988 was 15%)and the like but unlike 1979 we had an industrial base, she got rid of that so we have nothing to fall back on.
It was Margaret Thatcher who deregulated the banking sector not Gordon Brown, so the ones responsible for the large debt we have is the ones who are now in power.
Margaret Thatchers saying was we will kick start the economy, she should have, and the present incumbents of power should take a lesson from nature, once a species is extinct you cannot bring it back to life and that goes for our industrial base and economy that Margaret Thatcher and her banking cronies destroyed.