‘I just lost my head’: The Wanted’s Tom Parker recalls THAT football fight with Alastair Campbell

Tom Parker recalled having an ’embarrassing’ fight with Alastair Campbell on Instagram on Tuesday and labelled Alastair’s son ‘a d**k’ for getting involved.

Watching the former spin doctor, 63, speak on ITV, The Wanted singer, 32, told his fans of the moment in 2011 when they became embroiled in a heated row whilst playing a charity match at Burnley’s Turf Moor Ground.

Tom, who is battling a terminal brain tumour, said: ‘That Alastair Campbell. Remember we had a fight? His son was a d**k. He was getting involved and I was like “what you getting involved for?”

‘He kicked me really hard and I shouted “mummy you kicked me really hard”.’

Tom then explained: ‘For anyone that doesn’t know the story Alastair Campbell who was Tony Blair’s spin doctor. He did like a really bad challenge on me. It really f***ing hurt.’

‘We were at Soccer Six, a charity gig and I just lost my head. I just went at him. I was like “I’m not having that”. Then his son got involved. 

‘It’s the one and only time I’ve been in The Guardian. I was on the front page of The Guardian when I had that fight with Alastair Campbell. How embarrassing was that?’

Tom’s wife Kelsey, 31, then interjected: ‘I have never been so embarrassed and do you know what? That was when I first started dating you.’

She added: ‘I just was so embarrassed and I remember sitting there and I was with Max George’s nan and grandad and I was thinking I’m mortified and there’s Tom having fun on the pitch.’

Tom laughed: ‘I was showing you how hard I was. An hour later I got stretchered off for injuring my knee.’

Alastair Tweeted about the incident at the time saying it was ‘tasty in parts’ and ‘a bit handbags’.

In a later blog he also elaborated: ‘Tom had tackled me hard a couple of times, and I had tackled him a couple of times, including one that was a bit clumsy and mistimed.

And he backed up Tom’s assertion that his son had got involved adding: ‘In the pictures where I appear to be angriest I am actually shouting at my son, who had stormed in amid the pushing and shoving between me and Tom. 

‘It was the kind of thing people see on football pitches all the time, resolved by team-mates without the referee even having to resort to giving a free kick. 

‘The Wanted team were perfectly friendly at the end, though they had lost.’

It comes after Kelsey revealed Tom’s hair is starting to grow back after rounds of chemotherapy after being diagnosed with a stage 4 glioblastoma in September 2020.

Kelsey explained earlier this week: ‘Tom lost his hair to chemotherapy. Now it’s grown back, Albie is so happy.’  

Last month, Tom took to Instagram to share an inspiring behind-the-scenes-photo from his fight against the brain tumour.

Alongside a photo of him receiving treatment, the father-of-two wrote: ‘Another day of saving my life.’

This is Tom’s second round of treatment after he received chemotherapy and radiotherapy last year.

The star took a break from the medication due to problems with his liver but returned to hospital for his second round of chemotherapy. 

He has every motivation to keep fighting after doctors told him his tumour had responded well to chemotherapy and had ‘shrunk significantly’ in January.