TONY Blair’s communications chief Alastair Campbell has been talking about his early days as a reporter with the Tavistock Times in a online magazine launched by the Tavistock Locals Help group.

Alastair, who was a trainee reporter with the Times in 1980, agreed to write two articles for ‘Helping Hands’ when asked by journalist John Powell from Tavistock who started the magazine with designer Roger Croxson.

Helping Hands was instigated to keep the 170 or so volunteers of the coronavirus help group in touch with each other and keep them entertained during lockdown.

Alastair, who later became press secretary to Prime Minister Tony Blair during a turbulent time in British politics in the 1990s, writes about his fondness for the town and its people. It was where he met his wife of almost 40 years Fiona Millar who was also a trainee reporter on the Times.

The 62-year-old recalls in the articles: ‘The centre of our universe was the paper’s tiny office in Drake Road where editor Mary Richards, later replaced by Bill Beckett, presided over the handful of journalists and we got a very early lesson in the importance of getting facts right.

‘It wasn’t just Mary who called us out if we got something wrong but readers who would walk in through the front door to tell you the name of a mourner at a funeral had been wrongly recorded. It’s Alun with a “u” not Alan with an “a”,’ he said.

‘I was then, as I am now, a sports fanatic and on day one volunteered to write a sports column — Campbell’s corner — and edit the sports pages. Mary and her deputy, Pat Murray, neither of whom shared my passion for sport, were delighted. There can’t have been many young trainee journalists who got a picture byline in their first month.

‘I got into trouble at HQ for that first column too, urging people who travelled from Tavistock to follow Plymouth Argyle to watch the local team instead.’

Alastair talks about covering Tavistock Magistrates’ Court and wandering the pubs of Tavistock, following what was his new found motto that ‘there is a story in everyone.’

‘Though it was probably an excuse for another pub crawl, it was rare that I left a pub without something to take back to the paper,’ he said.

He also shares memories of legendary Times photographer Jim Thorington saying: ‘His knowledge of what was going on in the town was second to none!’