As part of the Mirror Group training scheme Campbell spent a year at a local weekly paper and he quickly became the sports editor at the "Tavistock Times", writing a column called 'Campbell's Corner'. It was while he was at the "Tavistock Times" he met his partner Fiona Millar, with whom he has three children; two sons (born November 1987 and July 1989) and a daughter, comedian Grace Campbell (born May 1994). However, his first significant contribution to the news pages was coverage of the Penlee lifeboat disaster in December 1981, while a trainee on the Plymouth-based "Sunday Independent", then owned by Mirror Group Newspapers.