The Daily Telegraph Thursday 1 August 2019 *** 21
FAMILY
Q
uick-witted, exceptional
public speaking skills
and highly creative.
These are some of
the most commonly
attributed personality
traits of stand-up comedians.
Growing up around Downing Street,
funnily enough, isn’t a prerequisite.
Yet Grace Campbell has that on her
CV, too.
Her father, Alastair Campbell,
started working closely with Tony
Blair just weeks after she was born.
On her third birthday, in 1997,
Blair won his first general election.
Campbell became the No 10 spin
doctor, while his partner, Fiona
Millar, mother to Grace and her two
older brothers, was an adviser to
Cherie. It meant that Grace spent her
childhood between the state school
she attended in north London, close
to the family home, and Westminster.
Growing up around the New
Labour nucleus of power was
“all I knew”, she says. “I had no
perspective of anything else. I didn’t
know my parents in the Eighties
when they were both journalists.
I just thought: ‘This is where
my dad works.’ ”
Since then, Grace,
now 25, has appeared in
Channel 4’s female prank
show Riot Girls; co-
founded feminist group
The Pink Protest
to encourage
young women
into activism;
battled live
on the
BBC withGrace Campbell, daughter of spin doctor
Alastair, wants to change the world with
her comedy, she tells Alice Barraclough
Politics is in
my blood, but
I won’t follow in
Dad’s footsteps
Banning millennials from
Disney is taking the Mickey
E
arlier this year, Ollie and I
walked into Disney World
Orlando in the Mickey and
Minnie Mouse ears we had
bought specifically for the occasion.
We were filled with joy. Not
because we were mother and young
son, enjoying a first and seminal visit
to the Magic Kingdom. But because,
at 37 (him) and 35 years old (me), we
were embarking on our honeymoon:
a 14-day adventure that included
seven days at Disney World’s four
parks, followed by a road trip to
Miami and Key West.
Having both visited as children
with our families, it felt fitting to go
back as we started our married life
together. And following a stressful
period that saw us start new jobs, plan
a wedding, move house and change
city, we simply needed to have a good
time and let off steam. What could be
wrong with that?
A lot, apparently. As we discovered
the hard way, everyone seems to have
a firm opinion on whether childless
adults like us should be allowed to
enjoy Disney World.
Were we met with strange looks
when we told our friends we were
spending a week hanging out with
Donald Duck? Absolutely. One
colleague actually screamed out loud
in horror on learning that, rather than
lounging on a Caribbean beach for a
fortnight, we would be meeting our
favourite characters and enjoying the
amusements.
Others agree. Last weekend, the
debate went viral after a Facebook
rant by a stressed-out mother, who
raged that the Florida resort should
be for families only – no childless
millennials allowed.
“DW is a FAMILY amusement
park!” she wrote, adding later, “DW
is for CHILDREN!!!! People without
CHILDREN need to BANNED!!”
The woman claimed that adults
who visit without offspring make
the experience more difficult for
families, after her three-year-old son
had a tantrum when she told him they
couldn’t wait in a long queue for a
pretzel. Charmingly, she also accused
young women of wearing “sluttyAs a mother suggests theme
parks should limit childless
couples, Jessica Barrett says
that it’s her happy placeshorts”, and finished the post with a
series of furious emoji to drive the
point home.
The New York Post followed up with
an opinion piece entitled, “Sorry,
childless millennials going to Disney
World is weird”. Writer Johnny
Oleksinski claimed that the problem
with “letting a kids’ brand control youradult life” is that it leads to
“stupidity” and “culture
ignorance”.
He added that
millennials are
in an unhealthy
relationship,
“having granted
control of so much
of their leisure time
and personality to
a single, enormous
corporate entity
meant for children.”
Ouch.
Visiting Disney
World is just the
latest on a list
of things we
millennials are
being told off for.My generation is, if recent reports are
to be believed, work-shy, over-sensitive
and so keen on avocado that we would
happily choose it over saving to buy a
house.
Perhaps it’s hardly surprising, then,
that we are using innocent pastimes
as a pressure-release valve. Adult
colouring books are huge, especially
since it emerged they are favoured by
the Duchess of Cambridge. Last year,
Lego launched a campaign targeted at
“stressed-out millennials”, encouraging
us to find our “Zen” by slotting the
plastic bricks together. Going on
holiday to Disney World is just another
way of harnessing that innocent
nostalgia to de-stress.
It stands to reason that among the
resort’s 52 million annual visitors will
be young adults who watched the
films and TV channel growing up.
It is a cultural touchstone for most
millennials. Why must they have
children of their own to continue
enjoying something that has brought
them pleasure for decades? Are we to
be banned from going to the cinema to
watch the The Lion King remake, too?
Forget Ibiza or Las Vegas – nothing
beats Disney World with a disposable
income. And the economic reality
is that we childless adults are
contributing to keeping the parks in
business, so they are still there for
families to enjoy. While I might not
yet have children of my own to share
it with, it certainly doesn’t mean that
I’m ruining the fun for anyone else.
And we definitely had fun. We
went on the Frozen ride holding
frozen margaritas. We stayed
out late to watch the fireworks
every night. We did what
we wanted, when we
wanted. How often can
stressed-out young
people say that?
Of course, we are
looking forward to
going back with
our own children
one day; it will be a
magical experience
to see Disney through
their eyes. Will I
glare resentfully at
any young, childless
couples ahead of
me? Quite possibly.
But banning them
from the “happiest
place on Earth”?
That’s just wicked.Magical honeymoon: Jessica and her
husband Ollie posed with Goofy, belowConservative MP Mark Francois over
a second referendum – oh, and, called
out her dad on national radio.
The former Labour spin doctor
was debating feminism last year on
LBC, when Grace rang in to query
his behaviour. “You still call women
‘birds’ ... you don’t even think about
the impact that has,” she told him. “If
you truly want to be a feminist ... you
call women women, you don’t call
them birds.”
Grace hadn’t, she admits now,
planned what she was going to say
before picking up the phone. “I just
thought it was ridiculous that he was
doing a show about feminism, and it’s
my thing – it’s like me going on TV
and talking about New Labour,” she
shrugs.
Off the back of that fiery exchange- during which Campbell joked about
Grace’s lack of football knowledge –
father and daughter have launched
a podcast, aptly named Football,
Feminism and Everything in Between,
in which they debate topics from
Countdown to anti-Semitism with
guests including Jamie Carragher, the
former Liverpool footballer.
“All anyone wants to talk to Dad - and me – about at the moment is
politics,” says Grace. “But I like Love
Island and talking about everyday
things so it’s nice to
have a platform that’s
not just about that.”
Grace is also
making a name
for herself in
stand-up, with
a debut solo
show at the
Edinburgh
Fringe that previewed last night and
runs for most of this month.
“The show is all about me. It’s about
the things I’ve seen in my family’s
political situation and my experience
as a young woman,” she says. “A lot
of middle-aged people come along
because of the Alastair Campbell
element and they leave knowing a lotmore about my vagina. I’ve got lots of
sex stories and I’m very open.”
That’s not to say she ignores her
famous father, but Grace is at pains to
explain that only a small part of her act
is about him. “I talk about my dad for
about seven minutes, and I never tell
any stories that I wasn’t actually there
for,” she insists. “My two brothers
probably remember it all a bit better
because they were older. I didn’t even
know who David Miliband was – hewas just another man in glasses. The
only person I really remember was
David Blunkett because he had a guide
dog I loved playing with.”
Writing the show, she says,
has helped her make sense of her
childhood and acknowledge how
unusual some thing were – like
meeting Vladimir Putin’s children.
“When Putin came to see Blair, we
took his family out around London and
went on the London Eye.”
The process has forced Grace to
revisit some unpleasant memories,
such as being surrounded by people
making huge decisions about the
future of Britain, which, had she been
older, she would have had some strong
opinions on.
“In a way, I was quite lucky because
I was too young to fully understand,”
she admits. “I talk about it in the show,
but when all the stuff with the Iraq war
was happening I was quite young, so I
wasn’t hugely aware of what was going
on. I was more into skateboarding and
convincing my parents to get me a
pony.”
Grace has previously spoken
about her parents arguing over theconflict (her mother being against,
her father pro) and the realisation in
her late teens, when questioned by
schoolmates, that she would have
sided with her mother. “I’m still
affected by it now,” she says.
She has also been affected by
her father’s much-publicised battle
with mental health, which dogged
him throughout his Downing Street
years and beyond. Encouraged by
his openness, Grace has also gonepublic over her own struggles with
anxiety and panic attacks, as well as
her attempts to cheer up her dad. “It
feels appropriate that I’m working
full time as a stand-up comedian
because I’ve been finessing my
comedy skills since I was a kid,” she
told a broadsheet newspaper this
year.
She was with her father last
month when he was expelled from
the Labour Party after revealing
he voted Liberal Democrat in the
European elections. This week,
Campbell wrote to Jeremy Corbyn
to say he no longer wished to be a
party member.
“My dad does nothing by halves,”
says Grace. “Being kicked out of
Labour has become his way of
campaigning against a leadership
that he thinks is doing a terrible job.
I think he is speaking for a lot of
people right now when he says he
can’t support the party. He helped
bring them to power multiple times,
with huge success. He knows whatneeds to be done in this country for
Labour to win power. That’s why
people are listening.”
She is, I suggest, also establishing
herself as a powerful voice within her
generation. Surely she is just the sort
of woman we need in Parliament?
“There are lots of reasons why
I’m never going into politics – but
the main one is the fact that it’s still
a boys’ club,” she says. “Only 33 per
cent of MPs are female, and 32 per
cent of MPs went to private school –
how disgusting is that? It just sums
up everything that’s wrong with our
political system.
“We need what happened in
America to happen here. There
was an influx of women running
for Congress last year and they put
money behind people of colour
and diverse candidates. We need a
movement of young women being
like f--- it, I’m going to run as an MP.”
She also wants to be free to talk
about whatever she wants.
“When you’re a politician you are
answering to so many other people;
there are rules,” she adds.
“And politicians don’t have a
huge amount of power because all
their conversations are dominated
by Brexit. There are other ways to
change the world. I’m always going
to be ‘in’ politics – it’s who I am,
it’s in my blood. But I’ll never be a
politician.”Riot girl: Grace Campbell has a solo show in Edinburgh; in a Channel 4 prank show, below, and with father Alastair, inset‘Dad speaks for lots
of people when he
says he can’t support
the Labour Party’
‘We need what
happened in
America to happen
here in Britain’
TINA REMIZ/CHANNEL 4; DAVE M BENETT/GETTY IMAGESForget Ibiza or Vegas
- nothing beats
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