Quick Facts
Biography
Jamie Campbell (born James Robert Campbell on 18 May 1977) is an English documentary film maker. He lives in London and studied at Radley College and Durham University, where he read English Literature. He has been described as "a kind of Louis Theroux for the post-geek lady viewer."
His documentaries, usually made together with Joel J Wilson, have aired on Channel 4 and the BBC. They include "Alex and I" (2002), "Osama and US" (2003), "Don’t Panic" (2004), "Martha and Me" (2006), "Come Home Gary Glitter" (2006), "Candid Cameron" (2006) and "Make Me a Virgin" (2007). He also directed Giles Coren’s film "Tax the Fat" (2006). A sequence of tongue-in-cheek short films "Ingham Infiltrates" (2005) can be seen online.
His first TV series was 24 Hours with..., produced by Hideous Productions for ITV, first aired on 11 June 2007. Jamie spends 24hrs locked in a room with his guests, providing opportunities to draw out their characters that are not available in typical interviews. His guests for the first series were: Bobby Brown, Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, Lee Ryan, David Gest, Stan Collymore and Steve-O. Jamie described the pattern which emerged in many of these interviews: "So you'd have a period of seven or eight hours where you get to know each other, you're essentially dancing and sniffing each other out, trying to work out what the other person is like. That's a two way process. There's a period after that which is maybe five or six hours long where inevitably, some crisis occurs - and it's either a crisis for them or for me - and it can sometimes involve a bunch of things, or sometimes threats. Maybe it's sleep deprivation. And quite often we had a period of a couple of hours of sleep and the rest of the time in the room is usually about patching it up, trying to make friends again, trying to work out what just happened, or what we are going to do when we leave the room. So it was quite curious for me to see that cycle emerging."
In 2009, Campbell's production company Eleven Film made a series about breast cancer for Sky One, presented by Dawn Porter; and Cast Offs, a drama series for Channel 4.
Campbell has written for the New Statesman, The Guardian and the Mail on Sunday; and directs commercials for 2am Films.
On 10 September 2011 he married Amber Sainsbury on the island of Paxos in Greece.