It might surprise you to learn that there’s a Nicola Sturgeon fan club, but there is. I’ve been amongst them.
They gathered at the King’s Theatre on Saturday for Books & Banter, billed as ‘a brilliant – and revelatory – evening’ of literary bavardage between the former first minister and her novelist chum Val McDermid.
It was all part of the Glasgow International Comedy Festival, though the journey from solicitor to minister to aspiring celebrity is more tragic than I like my comedy.
Who are the Sturgeon fan club? They’re predominantly female, decidedly middle-aged and apparently very concerned about security.
My bag was searched twice just to get in the door. Don’t look at me. You’d never fit a camper van in there.
After some thematic empowerment pop — ‘Sisters Are Doin’ it for Themselves’ by Eurythmics — Sturgeon and McDermid toddled on stage to a deafening cheer that tsunamied from stalls all the way up to the gods.
Sturgeon, in jeans and a casual top, began working the audience.
‘Shout if you’re from Glasgow.’
Raucous roar.
Nicola Sturgeon and Val McDermid play it for middle-class laughs at Glasgow comedy festival
‘Shout if you’re from Fife.’
More modest roar.
‘A translator will be along in due course.’
Tipping her head in the direction of her mate, she added: ‘We’re running late. Val got stuck at passport control on the M8.’
The crowd lapped it up, but not as much as McDermid’s opening gambit. She turned to Sturgeon, and said: ‘Very special day for you. You’re free.’
My eardrums may never recover from the triumphant squalling that erupted around me. Sturgeon, after mock-chastising McDermid for venturing beyond agreed topics, admitted the last few years had been ‘interesting’ and said she ‘wouldn’t have got through it without good pals’, thanking also the many strangers who had sent her messages of support. Strange is the right word.
But this was meant to be about books, and it didn’t take long to get onto a forthcoming literary debut. ‘Various people thought I didn’t write a novel last year because I was writing your memoirs,’ McDermid drawled. Then, a beat: ‘They would be a lot funnier if I did.’
The Queen of Tartan Noir promised their conversation would ‘explore the love and laughter between the covers’, prompting an exaggerated ‘Oooooh’ from the fan-girl audience.
Sturgeon ticked her off for ‘giving the Daily Mail its headline’.
There followed a geyser of gushiness, as the pair luvvied it up, about Sturgeon’s desire to rewrite the character arc of DCI Karen Pirie to the first time McDermid and her wife invited the first minister to dinner. (The Mermaids Singing author served savoury custard topped with mini veg, a depravity to rival anything her character Tony Hill ever encountered.)
It’s not hard to see how the two bonded, given their shared reverence for libraries. A juvenile McDermid honed her gift for literary invention by concocting a serious illness for her mother that required the local librarian to give young Val access to the adult crime fiction.
What were they reading at the moment? For Sturgeon: Careless People, by Sarah Wynn-Williams, a critical insider’s account of Facebook. McDermid was re-reading the novels of Michael Dibdin, whose Aurelio Zen series is set in the murky world of Italian politics.
‘More interesting than Scottish politics,’ Sturgeon quipped.
‘Marginally more corruption than in Scottish politics,’ McDermid riposted.
The wit was mid, in the way middle-class humour usually is and Glasgow middle-class humour always is. If you enjoy podcasts where friendly but banal people agree on everything, you would have loved this.
Then, author Christopher Brookmyre. discussed his first novel, Quite Ugly One Morning, and the famous ‘jobby on the mantlepiece’ of its opening pages. He reflected also on his having written four novels before he got one in print: ‘There remains a deep-seated prejudice in publishing against novels that are s****.’
A cynic might note that, for a satirical novelist, Brookmyre seemed to spend almost a decade missing an obvious and powerful target for his incisive pen. One he was now sharing a stage with.
Mind you, I doubt the Nicola Sturgeon fan club would have approved of that.