Nicky Campbell - Background

Background

Campbell met his first wife Linda Larnach, who was eight years older than he was, in Scotland. He later nursed her through a cancer scare and ME, and took time out from his career. He was then criticised when he broke up with her and she gave interviews in which she said his career break had been a publicity stunt.

Campbell married his second wife, journalist Tina (Christina) Ritchie who is the former head of Virgin Radio News, in December 1997 in Kensington, and the couple have four daughters (born December 1998, June 2000, January 2002 and June 2004). In 1989 during his first marriage, he had traced his birth mother and after having children of his own with Ritchie, Campbell decided to find his Irish biological father in 2002. Whereas his birth mother was from a Dublin Protestant family his biological father was a Northern Irish Catholic thirteen years younger than her. He also discovered that his grandfather had been in the IRA at the time of Michael Collins, and his biological father had spent time in the fifties in the IRA and still cleaved to his Republican beliefs. His cousin had also both been in the IRA. Anthony Hughes was killed by British troops in Armagh in 1973. In 2004 Campbell wrote Blue-Eyed Son, his account of being adopted and tracing both his birth parents and his extended families in Ireland in which he also confesses to adultery against his first wife in a Holiday Inn in Birmingham. Both sides of his birth families helped with and contributed to the book. His birth mother Stella died in 2007. Campbell spoke at her Dublin funeral. As a result of his book and work in adoption, he was asked to become Patron of the British Association for Adoption and Fostering.