We should point out right at the start that a reader donated £12 back in the summer specifically to send us to Nicola Sturgeon’s book event in Bath last night.
We assume it was someone we’d upset in some way.
We arrived bang on 6.30, expecting to be among the first on the scene, but in fact there were already dozens of people inside, although nobody was sat in the front rows, which were all marked “RESERVED”.
The evening’s crowd was approximately 75% female and almost exclusively over-50s, although a very small smattering of students showed up late on and sat at the back.
By the start the two middle columns of pews were pretty much full, with the two outer columns mostly empty, for a total of maybe 120 attendees. (“Early bird” tickets were still on sale on the day.)
Bang on 7pm the event kicked off and we met our host, who didn’t introduce herself but was a moon-faced, blue-haired young woman we’ll call Starsprinkle, reading out her lines from a bundle of sheets of A4.
Any readers who feel at this point that they can already predict the calibre of inquisition that Sturgeon was about to be subjected to from what Starsprinkle called “my own questions” can rest assured that they’re right on the money, in spades. “What’s it like to be a woman in politics?” was as tough as it got.
(There wasn’t a single mention of Peter Murrell, Alex Salmond, campervans or missing money or blue tents, Isla Bryson or even – as far as we can recall – of independence, which one might consider rather odd.)
[EDIT 4.30pm: Reviewing the recording, she does briefly discuss it about 25 minutes in. It was so boring we’d genuinely forgotten.]
Of course, this wasn’t Newsnight. People mostly hadn’t shown up to witness a brutal grilling and Starsprinkle works for a small bookseller, not a national news channel. But purely on a “halfway entertaining and interesting evening for paying customers” level it was bland and anodyne and bloodless well below our lowest expectations.
Most questions weren’t really questions at all, rather invitations to relate some folksy anecdote that people would have already read in the book, such as the gripping tale of when Sturgeon knocked someone’s door twice during the same canvassing session.
(The edgiest it got was probably when Sturgeon suggested that some of the negative reviews of the book had been written before people read it.)
This went on for 40 stupefyingly dull minutes, after which it’d be time for questions from the audience. However, there’d be nothing spontaneous. At the start Starsprinkle had told us – something that hadn’t been mentioned previously – that questions were to be pre-vetted and submitted via QR codes stuck on pillars.
But St Mary’s Church is located in a notorious network desert on the eastern edge of the city, and sure enough there was zero signal for the first 20 minutes.
We’d also been told by email that afternoon that Sturgeon wouldn’t be hanging around to sign books and pose for selfies afterwards, “Due to time constraints”.
But that doesn’t actually make any sense. As far as we’ve been able to ascertain there are no flights or trains from Bath back to Scotland after 8pm, and if she was staying in town, or being taken back by car, or going somewhere closer (though the next book event isn’t until next Wednesday), then half an hour wouldn’t have made much odds.
(If, for example, she was heading to her beloved London to hang out in some gay clubs, the last train from Bath on a Thursday night doesn’t leave until almost 11pm.)
However, about 25 minutes in our phone had suddenly managed to pick up a signal from somewhere, so we submitted our question.
We were excited to hear the answer, because Sturgeon had made great play of how important it was to meet people in real life, rather than online, who disagreed with you, and not to live in a political echo chamber, and to actually debate things.
As she chuntered away about her favourite books in response to another penetrating question from Starsprinkle, I had a browse through the list of questions people had sent in, some of which were at least mildly spicy.
Below are all the ones that WEREN’T asked.
Instead, these were the ones Starsprinkle read out:
We’re sure readers can imagine the spellbinding insights that resulted. (Writing a book is “bloody hard”, apparently, you beat Reform by telling people immigration is great and “of course” Scotland will qualify for World Cup 2026, even though the team’s recent performances have been “really really shit”.)
The answer to the Reform question sparked pretty much the only audience reaction of the night – spontaneous applause at the revelation that Nigel Farage and Brexit were bad – and people dutifully laughed a bit at the Category Z sweary words.
And then we were done. On the dot of 8pm she was up and out the door, never to be seen again, leaving only a table full of unsold (but pre-signed) books behind.
Nobody ever came to sit in any of the “RESERVED” seats. Their only purpose seemed to be to act as a firewall between The Great Unwashed and The Sainted Nicola, who had no interactions with anyone other than Starsprinkle.
We did get to sit in her eyeline, though, so we hope she enjoyed the nice t-shirt we had made specially for the event.
Perhaps the most notable thing about “Frankly” (and its promotional circuit) is how closely it mirrors the character of Sturgeon’s time as First Minister, because its recurring theme is cowardice.
She ran away from every fight during her time in Bute House, deleting, denying and forgetting evidence at every turn, and in the book she coyly pretends to say things while actually avoiding giving any proper answers, in much the same way that she used to issue statements that SOUNDED like promises of another referendum unless you actually read them properly.
We don’t know whether Sturgeon stipulated the format of last night’s event and its studied complete avoidance of difficult subjects, or if Starsprinkle and her employers were responsible. (Starsprinkle was intermittently handed more sheets of paper which we assume were the audience questions, but we couldn’t tell if she was selecting them herself from the full list or if they’d somehow found someone even wetter than her to censor them in advance.)
But St Mary’s Church was by no conceivable stretch a hostile room, and we’d be pretty surprised if other authors were so rigorously shielded at every turn from the voices of the overwhelmingly friendly punters who’d paid to come and see them in the flesh.
If it was all done in Bath for our benefit we’ll be very flattered, of course, but we suspect that Nicola Sturgeon just doesn’t like surprises, and isn’t taking any chances with ANY tricky questions from anyone on the tour – even now she’s not in charge of anything, doesn’t need anyone’s votes and has her fat advance safely in the bank.
Despite her extensive wanging on last night about facing down people who don’t like you and winning support by out-debating them, she doesn’t want any of them actually in her divine presence. (Just like as soon as things got a little sticky, she deprived them of the chance to vote her out.)
Because when it all boils down, all she is is a coward.
