A stout heart

Sir Menzies Campbell triumphed on the track and against cancer, and losing the Lib Dem leadership has still not defeated him

FROM the moment television satirists portrayed Sir Menzies Campbell as the nation's granddad dozing in his chair with a bag of Werther's Originals, it was clear this was one of those coruscating political images that would be like a pen drawing: impossible to rub out. It was funny in the way caricatures are funny: as kernels of truth viciously swathed in comic exaggeration. It stopped being funny when it was taken seriously. The concentration on his advanced years (he's only 66) led to Campbell's resignation as leader of the Liberal Democrats, but when he opens the door of his elegant Edinburgh townhouse, the first surprise is his sheer physical presence. An Olympic athlete in his youth, who broke the British sprint record for the 100 metres, he is hardly reduced to his zimmer yet: he's 6ft 2in tall, very broad-shouldered and quite physically imposing.

Televisual images can be two-dimensional. The camera lens enhances some people. It drains others. As Campbell leads the way to the polished table of his dining room, it becomes apparent that the camera swallows elements not just of his physique but also of his personality. Let's be honest: he comes across as one of those patrician, formal, old-guard politicians. Possibly his manner more than his years marked him out to the satirists as a different generation. But in person, he has the immediate warmth of these rich, red walls in his dining room.

Campbell has just returned from Los Angeles and his wife, Elspeth, has had little chance to speak to him. Elspeth is a colourful character, painted in the press as a cross between a mischievous minx and ambitious Lady Macbeth. (She has, says her husband, the same capacity for "directness" as Cherie Blair. And she loves the gossip, not the detail of politics.) Elspeth pops her head round the door. She's had an e-mail about his autobiography from his sister-in-law. She was bowled over by it and learned things about him she never knew.

"She said your devotion to me shone through," says Elspeth, and Ming looks at her and laughs. "I was really touched by that," says Elspeth, and she suddenly comes across and hugs him, kissing his cheek. "Yes, okay," says Ming, laughing again, a soft, self-conscious laugh, like he's pleased and embarrassed in one. "We'll do the professional stuff now we've done the hearts and flowers," he says.

It was his professional – rather than human – approach that people questioned in his dealing with predecessor Charles Kennedy, who resigned due to alcohol problems. Had Campbell helped Kennedy enough? Or did he plot against him to become leader himself? The most illuminating information in Campbell's book about his dealings with Kennedy is the revelation that Campbell's own father, head of Glasgow Corporation's Building Department, had a drink problem. (Campbell never touches whisky; even the smell takes him back to childhood.) Was his childhood unhappy? "In bursts," he admits. Did he love his father? Oh yes, he remembers him, "with considerable affection".

But he never tackled him. As a schoolboy, he simply took his homework to the Mitchell Library for four hours every night. "My sister would go toe-to-toe with him and shout the odds. I was more bookish, less confident in that situation than she was." Campbell studied law at Glasgow University and was financially dependent on his father. "That went on until I was called to the bar. He sought to exert influence with that dependence."

When his father died, Campbell was due to go to Llandudno, where the Liberals were approving the alliance with the SDP. "My conscience told me that I should go to my mother and sister," he writes, "but every political fibre in my body yearned for the excitement and drama of Llandudno." He went to Llandudno.

Sometimes bereaved people do things out of duty, panic or simply to have something to hold on to. They rarely yearn for excitement and drama. But just paragraphs later, he poignantly describes walking down the church aisle at his father's funeral holding his mother's hand. Perhaps his ambivalence says much about the suppressed emotions of his relationship with his father.

He says his father's experiences made him sympathetic to Kennedy. But possibly it also laid down the pattern of non-intervention. As a child, he was good at cutting off and concentrating on things that interested him, like sport. He avoided confrontation. "I was and am fond of Charles," he tells me, and I believe him. Yet when Kennedy turned up shaking and hung-over to meet Yasser Arafat, Campbell complained to the Chief Whip rather than speaking to Kennedy. In a meeting years later, he suggested it would be easier to treat Kennedy "like a client rather than a friend". Given his personal history, perhaps that was unsurprising.

"Greg Hurst wrote a biography of Charles in which he said, with some justification, that I'd never resolved the conflict of interest between being depute leader and supporting Charles. I don't demur from that judgment but it was bloody difficult. It is hard to march in on someone you like and respect, and face them up. That's true in families too."

There is a humility about Campbell's discussion of Kennedy, an admission he didn't quite know what to do. One colleague says bluntly: "I certainly don't think he tried to undermine Charles – and others did." And alcoholics are often in denial. Everything is fixed or about to be fixed.

"The morning after, they will promise you the earth and they will mean it," says Campbell. "That's the thing you have to understand. They mean it when they say, 'Never again'. But the trigger is passing a pub or someone saying, 'Just come and have a half pint.' That's why it's an illness."

It's true Campbell is highly competitive. ("You win your race, you win your case, you win your seat," he says.) But he has always tried "to play by the Queensberry rules". Senior party figures talk not only of his intellect and gravitas, but also his sense of principle. He could have achieved office in other parties, one points out, rather than struggling in the Liberal wilderness. A senior figure in Scottish law, he turned down his lifetime ambition of becoming a judge in 1996 to pursue his political career. At the time, he was rumoured to be in line for a Cabinet post in a Lib-Lab coalition government. Blair won a huge majority and it wasn't to be.

In 2002, he faced his biggest personal crisis when diagnosed with cancer. "You join this club you don't want to be part of," he explains. There were low moments, terrible moments. "One ridiculously so…" He breaks off, laughing at himself. It was watching the film Rob Roy, he says. "At the end he comes back… and the music is… I mean, it's really Hollywood schmaltz. Schmaltz! And I had tears pouring down my face. It was all about coming home and these ideas…" He pushes on quickly. "And then there was a time I woke up at 2am and couldn't get back to sleep and I kept wondering what would happen if…" He stops.

Every step of his treatment was aided by Elspeth and by the odd glass of champagne for good cheer and courage. But good wishes made the biggest difference. When he married Elspeth, she was divorced with a four-year-old son, James. James phoned every night at 7pm. "I don't mean every second night, I mean every night. 'What about tomorrow, anything need doing?' He has three sons and would say 'the boys would like to come and see Ming'." Old friends contacted him. Strangers contacted him. They'd say they voted anarchist, he jokes, or Scottish republican something… but they still wished him well.

But interestingly, several friends avoided him. "They confessed to others that they couldn't bring themselves to do anything. What I've learned is that if you have a friend, even if you can't bring yourself to talk to them, write a note or leave a message. Even if it's a tiny little thing, the cumulative effect of knowing all these people are rooting for you is really important." Did cancer change him? Yes, he admits. Not overnight but over time. He thinks about it but doesn't brood.

When he was ill, a stranger got in touch and said: "I know you have cancer but you were on Newsnight last week. My dad has cancer. Could you write him a note?" And did he? Yes. Nothing meaningful or profound. What did he write? "I wrote something like, 'Dear Sir, I understand you are going through something the same as me. I am sure the support of your family and friends is enormously important." He pauses. "Be of stout heart." Be of stout heart: it seems a very apt phrase for Campbell. The phrase, the way he says it, and the silence that follows are very touching.

Campbell is coming up for his five-year all-clear. And the experience helped in his leadership crisis because it put politics in perspective. But sometimes he found criticism of his age "deeply unpleasant", he admits. (Particularly poignant, one imagines, for a former athlete.) "He's sensitive," says one senior colleague, "and shy – though he'd probably deny it." Secretly, he got coaching to improve his Commons performance. It wasn't enough.

Campbell had vowed to improve party professionalism and colleagues say he certainly achieved that. Organisationally, they were ready for a general election when Brown announced there wouldn't be one. Campbell was staring into a two-year abyss of criticism. He wouldn't be any younger at the end of it. When told lifelong friends Sir David Steel and Paddy Ashdown wanted to see him, it was the final straw. He resigned. Ashdown later said he just wanted to advise him that if he stayed now, he'd need to continue until 2010 – he couldn't change his mind in six months.

Did Campbell feel betrayed? "I am not bitter," he insists. "I am frustrated and irritated that I didn't get to run a general election campaign. I'd have loved to have done that." But perhaps Elspeth is a little bitter. She says she'd better not comment because her feelings are "more hardline than Ming's". Ming smiles.

Frustratingly, the week before his resignation had been a good one. A rapturous reception to his party conference speech. A positive Question Time appearance. (A fellow panellist had written to one of Campbell's friends saying he had been "brilliant". The papers described him as "lacklustre".) He was getting standing ovations at receptions, but being booted in the press for being "old".

A society that loses respect for age and wisdom has clearly lost its way. "If we're going to bomb Iran, who would you like to decide that?" asks Campbell. He backed Nick Clegg in the leadership battle that followed his resignation, though he didn't declare it at the time. In fact, Campbell first initiated the current controversial policy on the European referendum that got Clegg into hot water last week. Clegg and Huhne backed him.

And what of Scotland and its Parliament? Campbell was passionately pro-devolution. With a Nationalist government, does he regret that? Not a bit. "Salmond is a skilful politician and it would be foolish for anyone to underestimate him. But government is not about concepts or aspiration. It's about delivery. And the moments of truth are going to arise more frequently." Too few police and student finance problems will end Salmond's honeymoon period, he says. "And while we're on a matrimonial metaphor, nothing is more peculiar than the flirtation between him and Miss (Annabel] Goldie. Extraordinary."

Campbell will stand again at the next election. His motivation? "What I feel strongly about is the lack of opportunity for people in this country." There were just as talented runners walking down Sauchiehall Street who never got the opportunity to go to the Olympics. As talented lawyers who never got the chance. As talented MPs. He wants opportunities to be more widely available. "I feel I've had a life of opportunity," he says. "I don't feel it was a life of achievement."