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In a typically robust performance he denounced the allegation that he "sexed-up" the intelligence on Saddam's weapons last September as a lie.



He told the Foreign Affairs Committee that he only realised that February's now infamous 'dodgy' dossier was plagiarised was when Channel 4 News first reported that a large chunk had been downloaded from the internet.

Read the expose that brought Alastair Campbell to heel here.



Press corp:

"Are you going to survive this Alastair?"



Alastair Campbell:

"I suspect I'll survive longer than you will."



And with that characteristic flourish he was off to the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee to defend himself against what he admitted were very grave charges about two government dossiers.



The dodgy dossier published in February described the Iraqi secret state. It plagiarised an article by an academic called Dr Al Marashi, spiced up some of the language and was passed off as intelligence material.



Mr Campbell told the committee this was cock up not conspiracy, but the Committee suggested that because Mr Campbell was not on top of things and didn't know the origins of the document the Prime Minister had ended up misleading MPs by suggesting that the dossier was full of intelligence materials.



Mr Campbell denied this and said that the dodgy dossier was never supposed to be seen as such a weighty document. Although he acknowledged that it was significant enough to be waved around by the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, at the UN.



Mr Campbell was standing his ground on the government dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. It claimed that Iraq could deploy biological and chemical weapons in 45 minutes flat - a claim the newspapers made much of. Mr Campbell denied he'd sexed up the intelligence reports to make a stronger case for war, saying that in fact he had "sexed it down."



Mr Campbell - who knows a thing or two about these things - then guaranteed his morning headlines by letting fly at the BBC. He said the BBC had been pursuing an agenda on the war, lied about his work and owed him a grovelling apology.



Mr Campbell refused to name the official who originally lifted the thesis - he said the man felt awful about it.



The BBC tonight said it was standing by its story. The Committee is asking for more documents from Mr Campbell and maybe even a repeat appearance. Mr Campbell looked keen to return to the shadows.