The Simpsons in No 10

Guy Aitchison (London, OK): One of the unforeseen benefits of recent attempts to restrict access to Freedom of Information might have been to spare us from Alistair Campbell's painful attempts at humour. This is revealed in the memos between him and Blair on the proposed appearance of the PM in the Simpsons which have been the subject of a Freedom of Information disclosure (thanks to Martin Rosenbaum's excellent BBC blog on FOI for drawing my attention to this). Reading Campbell's suggestions for the script it seems he was determined to turn the episode into an advert on behalf of the British tourist board, having TB advise the family "you should go to my birthplace, Edinburgh, there's a big castle over there." "And why not stay in one of its many luxury, centrally located hotels?" he might have added... Campbell also tells Blair that due to the attention the episode will attract and "the opposition we'll get for you doing it" there must be a "rationale" behind it, "namely that you seize any opportunity to promote Britain." Replace the word "Britain" with the word "yourself" and I think you have a fair insight in to Blair's motivation sans spin... Am I being too harsh on our ex-PM (for once)? Although the finished episode wasn't as satirical as it could have been, Campbell didn't succeed in sucking all of the humour out of it...