S10, Ep5: Nicola Sturgeon, former politician

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:07I'm Grace Dent and this is Comfort Eating from The Guardian a podcast where we pay homage to the lesser celebrated foods in life because even as a restaurant critic I believe the food that matters most is often that snack you cobble together when you're curled upon the sofa Each week, I ask my guest to lift the lid on what comfort foods have seen them through their lives. Because you can tell a lot about a person from what they eat behind closed doors.

0:44Hello friends. Now my guest today is the former First Minister of Scotland. I am absolutely buzzing. this is a big moment in comfort eating history. I'll admit I'm a little bit nervous. Nervous. And also a touch envious. Because genuinely, people, why have I never been in charge of a small country? Well, you're probably coming up with lots of answers there quietly in your heads. I actually think I would be really, really good at it. Just a small, maybe a formerly Soviet country. A landlocked one, I think. The People's Republic of Graysonia. It's got a beautiful ring. I would burn fast and bright during what would be known as my glorious reign.

1:39The national anthem would probably be Enjoy the Silence by Depeche Mode. Military uniform would be a cinch-waisted structured dress delivered by Nutter Porter. Luckily Nicola Sturgeon was a little bit more sensible than that. Nicola was born in Ayrshire in 1970. She joined the Scottish National Party at just 16 and rose through the ranks to become Scotland's longest serving first minister from 2014 to 2023. She was the first ever woman in the role. Nicola has weathered an independence referendum, Brexit, a pandemic, countless press briefings and parliamentary spats. Her last few years have been overshadowed by Operation Branch Form, an investigation into fundraising fraud in the Scottish National Party that saw her and her now ex-husband arrested.

2:36She's been cleared of any wrongdoing. Her ex-husband, Peter Murrell, was charged with embezzlement in March 2025. Now she's on what's been called a rehabilitation tour with her new book called Frankly. I've read it and I can't wait to meet her. This woman is a powerhouse. She'll be here in a minute. I better get the kettle on.

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3:55nicola sturgeon welcome to comfort eating thank you thank you for having me and thank you for having me in your house as well i like to begin with the big important questions and a few years ago you waded into a very controversial issue it's one that involves the judicial system the taxman the court of public opinion. It is, of course, the Jaffa cake. The Jaffa cake? In 2020, you said, and I quote, in my humble opinion, a Jaffa cake is definitely a biscuit. There's no doubt about that. I've struggled to kind of get my head around the fact that it's even a debate. Of course, it's a biscuit. What else would it be?

4:41And for someone with your powers of debate, just looking at me going, of course it's a biscuit. The question, it was the subject of a very famous VAT tribunal. Jaffa cake manufacturers McVitties in Carlisle, my hometown, they insist it is a cake. Yeah, for tax reasons. Allegedly. I mean, I should probably cover myself there. But it's a bit like, you know, Tunnock's in Scotland. You know, the famous Tanuk's tea cake. Yeah. Yeah, it's called a tea cake. But in my view, it's a biscuit. Right. Look, we're going to move to snack time. I don't know what is under this tea towel. This is the time of the show where my guest reveals their ultimate comfort food.

5:28It is a snack that could fuel you to the ranks of First Minister of Scotland. It can empower you to chat to world leaders on the phone and embolden you to pass your driving test in your 50s. Well done, by the way. Nicola Sturgeon, please reveal your snack. I should say it's also the only dish that I'm capable of cooking with any aptitude. Okay, okay. Right, my chosen snack is beans on toast with grated cheese over the beans and Branston pickle. Wow. Can you talk me through what this snack means to you, when you would eat it? So I would often have this meal when I was a kid at school and I would come home for lunch and my mum or my dad, whoever happened to be home for lunch, usually my mum would make me this and I absolutely loved it but you know when I was first minister um even before that actually when I was health minister health minister eating this um anyway we'll gloss over that I would crave this because when you're in government office you spend a lot of time at you know dinners and eating kind of hotel rubber chicken food and sometimes I would just crave getting to have a night at home where I I could just put my feet up in front of the telly and eat beans on toast with cheese and Branston pickle.

7:01Nicola, you're out and about promoting your new book, frankly. So it feels like you're really taking stock of everything that you've achieved so far. You joined the SMP when you were just 16 years old and you won your first seat at 29. so you've been at the heart of Scottish politics and public life for over 40 years what are you most proud of? I think in terms of an achievement a sort of maybe this is not the right word but I'll use it anyway symbolic achievement I'm really proud of being the first woman to be first minister because I think and I learned this throughout my life representation representation really matters I think yeah for younger women for girls you have to be able to see somebody do something to believe that you can do it yourself it depresses me a little bit actually to sit here and say I don't know that there'll be another woman in that office anytime soon because and I think that's a broader comment about the state politics today over those 40 years lots of things in Scotland have changed but what about the food obviously there are many Michelin starred restaurants in Scotland now.

8:17But when I lived there, I was introduced to a wondrous thing called the Munchie Box. So a Munchie Box is a cardboard pizza box, often from a chip shop with lots of lovely little bits of fried things. You might get some deep fried pizza, some chips, some pakora, some onion rings, a battered sausage, all the lovely delicious battered things. Explain to me Scotland's relationship with batter then. You know, Scotland is obviously a wonderful place, but I suspect this sort of love of kind of stodgy, deep fried food has maybe come out of that sort of comfort eating, you know, to get through cold, dark winters.

9:04But, you know, you take fish and batter, for example, you know, classic fish supper, which I love. but underneath that batter or encased in that batter will be you know one of the greatest food products that comes out of scotland are fish so you know wonderful scottish haddock or cod and food and drink is definitely one of the most wonderful things about scotland and about our economy and our exports and it's what we're known for around the world i'm obviously talking about scotland's other national drink i am i'm glad that i've got you here can you explain to me what iron brew tastes of um do you know it's really hard to say but it certainly was the case that scotland was the only country in the world where coca-cola wasn't the top selling fizzy drink yeah it was iron brew when i think of iron brew it's the color of it that comes into my head i want to say it tastes like a really orangey you know it doesn't taste like orange it's really sweet And it is, you know, by common assent, and this I can say from experience is true, it is one of, if not the best cure for a hangover known to man or woman.

10:21If you can get as far as the fridge and there's a cold can of iron brew, a roll and square sausage, you're cured.

10:34We're going to go back to your roots. your parents were joan and robin your mum was 17 when she had you in 1970 do you remember her as being young younger than other parents or no i mean to me she was just my mum and i wasn't really aware of it um i think i became more aware of it as i got older that my mum was was young um and that was a brilliant thing and it's great today like the age gap between me and my mum yeah is not that great and I think that is just brilliant for our relationship as well but back then no it wasn't as out of the ordinary as it might feel today you spent loads of time when you were young with both sets of grandparents what sort of thing did you do with him as a little girl my granddad was a gardener he was the gardener for a big estate house um and so my grandparents lived in what was a tide house called the croft and it was on the coast um it was setting its own grounds um there was a field out the back and you know you would run across the field and suddenly you're on the beach and so it was just for a child it was a magical place to spend time and I used to create all sorts of adventures in my head playing around there there was my gran and granddad had hens they just pecked around everywhere they had loads of cats um they also you know collected stray cats they had dogs uh two labradors that i loved which makes the fact that i am now one of my in fact the only real phobia i have now is dogs i'm terrified of dogs and yet when as a child i wasn't I grew up around dogs is that your paternal grandparents that have the craft yeah and then you talked also about your maternal grandparents they feel like real characters was it Bobo Bobo so I used to I called my grandfather Bobo I don't know where that came I think it was just a sort of a childish pronunciation of granddad or something anyway that stuck and I called my maternal grandmother mum because it's what my mum called her so I just called her mum as well she was a Looking back now, she clearly suffered from difficult mental health at times.

12:55So she was quite volatile. Her relationship with my mum was quite vexed as well. My mum's got two younger brothers and mum, my grandmother, just idolised them. And her relationship with my mum was a bit more strained. So my relationship with her as a result of that, because I was uber defensive of my mum, was a bit strained. But she kind of brought any room that she was in alive. and we used to go there on Friday nights and getting back to food one of my kind of happiest memories the ice cream van would come and I'd go out to the ice cream van with her and would buy not ice cream actually but chocolate so dairy milk chocolate would be what she would buy at the van and if you had like 14 pence or something when you got there what did you have again I don't know if this is a thing in England but in Scotland it was 10 pence mix-ups so you're talking about like the the uh a flump a flying saucer with sherbet flying saucers with sherbet good good maybe a little little tube of palmo violets yeah maybe or these can be jelly sweets would be there but yeah but 10 pence mix-ups cola bottles loved cola bottles still love cola bottles actually so there you are with your sister at home with your parents when the call for dinner came what was most likely to be on the table and who's cooking back when i was a child it was always my mum and so we'd have pretty standard meals we would always the four of us sit around the table at tea time as we call it in scotland that's the main meal and it would be things like chicken pie and vegetables like boiled potatoes and i don't know cabbage or something like that um i was quite odd as a child because I loved vegetables my favorite food as a child and kind of still is today actually is brussels sprouts I could I mean literally sit and eat hundreds you're at home back then 70s you're eating your your brussels sprouts your chicken pie what sort of little girl were you I was a really quiet child quite shy I mean I had very strong kind of opinions I think my mum and dad would say I would be bolshie within the kind of family setting.

15:09I knew what I liked and didn't like. I knew what I wanted. I could be, like I tell a story in the book about when I was, I think about four. I loved Cilla Black as a kid. I was obsessed with Cilla Black. And I had a tantrum in a department store because I wanted this album with Cilla's face on the front of it. And my mum and dad said no. Then my granddad appeared and bought it for me. So I would be very, very kind of, you know, clear about what I wanted and would show my displeasure if I didn't get it. But I was I was shy. I was quiet. I was more often to be found with my nose in a book, hiding away than holding court over the dinner table.

15:47My sister was much more outgoing than me. So she would probably, you know, be much chattier over dinner than I was. Why Cilla Black? I don't know. I just loved her. I still think the Liverpudli accent is just amazing. so I think it was that and she was also just this really I don't know just larger than life person it was also probably like she had a Saturday night show back when I was young so we're talking about surprise surprise no it was before surprise surprise so like we're talking about the Scylla Black show the Scylla Black show or something it was on a Saturday night like she would come on and do a number and so it became a thing I got to stay up later on a Saturday night to watch it so that probably was a factor as well but i loved her i was devastated later on when i found out she was a tory much much later in life it broke my heart um look i've got to ask about your first forays into earning a crust for yourself now apparently you sold tatty scones door-to-door i've got it in my notes here as a door-to-door potato scone vendor

16:53yep right okay and this because i was so shy i would like i would literally stand at somebody's front gate and think i just can't go to the door and ask them to play so my dad ended up doing it for me and i love the fact that sometimes you knocked on the door in the opening it's actually your father standing there because you couldn't do it yourself yeah can i ask you about uh frosty's ice disco frosty's ice disco is exactly how it sounds it was an ice disco it was in the magnum leisure center which um was in the town i grew up in and back in i think the magnum opened in 1975 or thereabouts and it was the first big leisure center of its type in scotland and people came from all over scotland to it for a while until you know eventually similar places opened elsewhere is this ice skating the ice disco is ice so yes um i did ice dancing lessons as a child so i was i was into ice skating um which i really loved but on a saturday night there was a an ice disco which basically just consisted of us all skating round and round and round and round with lots of brilliant 80s music playing do you know something i have read your entire book and not once did was there a mention of your ice dancing lessons well i mean they didn't really go anywhere did they it's a really strange thing people used to occasionally say to me in interviews if you had to do a celebrity kind of reality show which one would you do and can i just say for the record i am never going to do one but if i'd had to pick one it would be dancing on ice.

18:37The thought of dancing on ice scares me less than dancing on a ballroom, which is really weird.

18:57It was in 1999 that you won your seat and your political journey began. You were MSP for Glasgow South Side. Finally, you have a chance to reshape policy. But more importantly, you have a whole new world of lunch break options. What are you ordering every day from the Scottish Parliamentary Cafe in Edinburgh? In my years as First Minister, and this will also sound very Scottish Presbyterian, I didn't often have lunch because it would be like really busy and everything. And I was very serious and full on, you know, focused on the job. When I'm working, I'm not a big lunch person because I find it makes me really tired for the rest of the day.

19:40But the Scottish Parliament Canteen has some really strong traditions. Like certain days of the week, it has certain things on the menu. So Thursday is macaroni cheese day. And basically, I've had it once or twice over the years, but basically it's macaroni cheese, chips and garlic bread. It's like triple carbohydrate. and people like sit on a Thursday and have this kind of plate of carbs. And then just before the parliament went into the summer recess just last week and one day just before the summer recess, they have barbecue day. And actually this is the first year that I can remember where it was actually barbecue weather.

20:20And then there's another day of the week where it's haggis, neeps and tatties. Is there a thing that when you end up at Scottish parliament, to people like instantly put on 12 pounds just through the food. Basically, I've just described that you would think so, but most people don't eat that kind of stuff every day. So I would usually just have salad or a sandwich or something. You and ex-First Minister Alex Salmon's working relationship was one of the most powerful political partnerships in UK history. You've said he was your friend and your mentor for 30 years. Now, there's a long history of political allegiances being formed over excellent meals, and he was known as a real fruity.

21:01So when he asked you to be his deputy in 2007, I want to imagine that this happened between mouthfuls of the finest venison in a Michelin-starred Edinburgh eatery. Well, it's actually not a million miles away from that. It was 2004, so Alec had been leader of the SNP and then stood down and then decided to come back and have another go in 2004. And that's when he asked me to run as his deputy, leader of the SNP. And the media came to describe this as our Granita moment. Remember the Blair Brown? Yeah. So this took place in a restaurant in Linlithgow, which was Alex's hometown called the Champney Inn.

21:44I don't know if it's got a Michelin star, but it's a really lovely restaurant. And it happened over steak and a bottle of red wine. Did you, I mean, at this point, are you opened up to kind of posher restaurants? and more dining experiences that you wouldn't have had. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I have eaten in some amazing restaurants in Scotland and elsewhere. I'm not the most adventurous eater. So fine dining experiences can sometimes challenge me a little bit because I'm not good with food that I don't really eat. So what happens when you're, that's, you know, over the years when everybody's sitting down and then suddenly they put a plate in front of you and they go, well, this is fragments of yeast with birch sap and a squirrel's cheek.

22:35Yeah, I mean, you're miming. Move it around. Pushing it around in a circular plate. Mime the act of eating it and then sort of try to sort of make it look as small as possible on the plate. But I would do my best and I don't want to sound like a complete kind of, you know food philistine here but yeah i'm not i'm not brilliant with that i the one food thing right that's not posh i'll come back to the posh example in a minute um that i cannot eat is peppers cannot eat them and i cannot eat anything that has been in the close proximity to a pepper i just can't it's not an allergy it's not an allergy it's just a hatred um you can't eat anything that's been close to a pepper that's been still the smell of the pepper next to it if it's been on the same plate if it's contaminated in any way by the pepper i can't eat it um it's the smell it's it's just and people have got this it actually slightly enrages me the tendency people have to put peppers in things that should never have peppers anywhere near them but anyway this is the most animated i've seen you since you since you got here it's this idea it was coming back to the poor example I hate and it's a bit similar because it's both the smell and the taste I hate truffle I mean it's basically just grated foot isn't it on the 20th of November 2014 you made history by Bukhormian Scotland's first female first minister you were 44 years old take us back to that november day like how how do you celebrate that i mean that day's a bit of a blur actually because i mean it happened off the back of the independence referendum i was you know exhausted by that so it was all a bit of a blur i had family there for the sort of swinging in ceremony and then they all came back to butte house which is the first minister's official residence in edinburgh and and there was like food and stuff i ended up going upstairs to the study because i had to i had to speak to david cameron and people like that on the the phone so i wasn't really part of it i was kind of there at the start i popped in a couple of times and then went to chuck them all out later on that's so poignant though that it's the biggest moment of your life and everybody's partying yeah and you're upstairs listening to the party.

25:08Yeah, and it's because the moment you take on a job like that, it's not, you don't sort of get the job and then, you know, you've got a couple of weeks to sort of get used to it and then it's literally from the moment. And it changes in a second. I mean, I'd been the deputy first minister, so it wasn't completely alien to me, obviously. From the moment, at the time it was the Queen, today it would be the King, signs the official warrant. That's everybody's attitude towards you. You know, it's first minister and it's all very formal in that sense. And you must have went upstairs taking those calls.

25:43And then when you come back down, your life is entirely different. So everybody's a little bit kind of walking backwards. Yeah, I mean, it's not quite, but in a sense, yes, there is a... And I suppose because I'd been deputy first minister for so long, I didn't really appreciate the qualitative difference in going from that to being first minister. But the sense of formality, the sense of, I'm using these words, I don't want to make it sound like in a way it wasn't, but deference and respect is completely different then. Is it hard? Is it lonely? It's very lonely. And I think that's what I remember, you know, the first time you you've got a decision to take and it's a tough decision and there's no obvious answer.

26:33And you realize for the first time that guy next door isn't there to pass it to if you really need to. It's a really lonely moment because by any leader will say this. By definition, the decisions that come to you are the ones nobody else wants to take or nobody else has been able to take. So they are the hardest decisions, the toughest decisions, the ones that really have no obvious answer. So, yeah, it's lonely. And the buck stops with you. And that was never more kind of real to me than it was during the pandemic. And yeah, but, you know, it's also without being trite about it, it's also a huge privilege.

27:12I'm going to ask you a question that people only ever ask women. and it's always annoying but I'm also really fascinated in it because from my point of view I'm really really busy all of the time doing all of the things I do present in tv and writing columns and all of the things and I always say that what I actually need is a wife who's at home your eight years in office spanned some of the most important and divisive periods in UK politics you've got Brexit, Covid, all of the joys and life must have been so busy when you get in after that you open the fridge is there anything in your fridge?

27:57Yeah my husband would do the shopping and cook a lot of the time at home and keep the house kind of running in that way but But also when you're first minister, you've got not doing domestic things for you, but you've got a huge team of people that are helping you get from A to B and know where you've got to be. So when you're in a job like that, you're the person people see. You're the kind of visible, you know, manifestation of that office. But behind that, there are so many people, you know, helping keep the whole thing going. Were you comfortable with that? because, you know, as like a Scottish person, very, very down to earth, do you feel comfortable going, look, we just need Hoover bags?

28:38I would never say that because I would probably, it would never occur to me that we would need Hoover bags. I would just, and you know, my husband. Hoover? What is this? Pardon? Because I find myself. Can I just, for the record and for my own sort of image. Have you ever Hoovered, Nicholas? Yes, of course I have Hoovered. Of course I have Hoovered. You know what that is. Of course I have Hoovered. But I want to say my sort of complete ineptitude when it comes to domestic tasks is not because of some grand I'm too important for that. It's just plain ineptitude. I'm not very good at it. It's not.

29:12Some might call it weaponised incompetence that you have just simply not learned how to change a bin bag so that nobody asks you to change a bin bag. But can I just fight back a little bit here? Do you still have Hoover bags? I mean, that says it all. Okay, let's... Hoover's not moved on beyond Hoover Vags. No. Back in your career, a big moment is the Brexit referendum. As leader of Scotland, you are staunchly pro-Remain. Frequently warning voters about the threat of disruption to European food imports. um now i've read that you love italian and spanish cuisine what i want to know is what was the food import that you were actually having sleepless nights about that there was going to be a drought of in scotland i think i was probably more talking about exports okay and disruption but if like coffee was to be disrupted i would i don't drink much coffee i only drink it in the morning but I'm like incapable without morning coffee so yeah I'm exactly the same like you can take off and you can take anything off me yeah no totally coffee so it wasn't it wasn't keeping you awake in that thing Scotland you might not get olives I don't like olives what do you eat Nicolas Sturgeon.

30:36Beans on toes. Beans on toes.

30:51Despite your shyness when you were younger and, you know, you didn't like knocking on doors and selling tarty scones, but then when you go into politics, you've definitely got this talent and a love of knocking on doors. You like it. What are you eating along the way there? Have you got like a protein ball in each pocket? But that whole thing about, so I'm still really shy. The whole notion of a public introvert really fascinates me because I am much more comfortable standing on somebody's doorstep talking about politics than, or talking to an audience of 10 ,000 people than I am sitting talking to two people.

31:27Do you think you're an introvert? I am totally an introvert, yeah. Do you like dinner parties? I hate dinner parties. Someone says just come over for supper. No, I hate that. It's fine if it's people I know, if it's a, you know, a set of uncomfortable. But going to official dinner, sitting around a table with a few people, I hate that. That's part of my job I hated most because I'm introverted. Put me on a stage and ask me to speak to that assembled, you know, room of people there at a dinner and I will be absolutely comfortable, totally in my comfort zone. What about like a wedding where you have to get there at 10 o 'clock can be there till almost midnight heat it and you can't go and you just and they put you on a table and then you have to dance in front of everybody yeah no i just i hate that i can feel myself breaking out in some kind of cold sweat at the thought of it but anyway in food so campaign food i my constituency in the south side of glasgow has a very big pakistani population smaller but still significant indian population so pakistani people are incredibly hospitable so going canvassing in the part of my constituency where it's predominantly Pakistani every door you would knock you would have to go in and be fed pakora and stuff so i would like i would people tend to lose weight during election campaigns because of the exercise i would be one of the few candidates who would always put weight on during an election campaign um so yeah pakora samosas would tend to be my campaign fuel did you ever take tupperware with I was never rude to take it with me, but I would often be given Tupperware, which is great because I would then take it back to the campaign office and people would devour it there.

33:20in 2021 an smp finances investigation began around complaints about the handling of over 600 000 pounds in donations raised for a second independence referendum leading to questions about financial transparency within the party. It's very important to say you were cleared of any wrongdoing earlier this year. Now, this is an enormously stressful time. I've read this part of your book and scrutiny you were under. Let's talk about eating at this point. So during that, I mean, it was the most stressful, traumatic actually, and I use that word deliberately, period of my life. But it kind of spanned almost a two-year period.

34:12So yeah, there would be periods where I wouldn't eat very much. And in times of acute stress, I tend not to eat. So I look back at photographs of myself during COVID and I just look painfully thin because for the early part of 2020, I wasn't sleeping very much I was hardly eating one of my health secretary during Covid her partner is one of my long term friends Susan and Susan took she was at home working from home during Covid and she took to making soup and sending with Jean my health secretary into the office every day with soup for my lunch and that actually was probably the only thing that made me eat because Susan would then insist on Jean taking the Tupperware the soup came in home at the end of the day to prove that I'd eaten so Susan's soup kept me going through Covid because I will just the stress that definitely stops me eating In 2023 you were arrested wrongly it has since turned out I want you to know that an extraordinarily high proportion of talented, famous, comfort eating guests have spent time in police cells Goldie, David Gray, Tom Perridge to name but a few now I do know for one thing that you receive a menu when you're in a police station I think there's only about three items on it there's a curry and all day breakfast did you eat anything during that time?

35:45no, it was a really hot day and I had decided that I wasn't going to eat anything I was just going to get in and get out and so I think I only had water water? how long were you there? i can't remember a few hours worst time of your life totally worst day of my life i mean family deaths and stuff aside obviously but they yeah the worst day but a different family deaths yes but that's a different totally it's different it's not even legitimate to compare the two because it's of a different order completely you drink water when you're there when you come out there's a lovely bit in your book and it says friends took you you know friends took you away I went to stay with a friend or at the house of a friend up in the northeast of Scotland and stayed there for about a week I think um and it was yeah it it was the right place to be because I used to sit and um just look out at the sea it was it was during a heat wave actually and I was stuck inside because I didn't I was paranoid about going outside because I thought somebody sees me somebody will tip off the media and suddenly I'll have the media outside and I didn't want to expose my friend to that but also I needed to be away from all of that just to get myself back on to some kind of even keel so I would kind of sit um actually started writing my book when I was there that week um and so I would sit staring out at the sea and like you know it's a strange thing because slowly it started to really sort of calm me and and and you kind of the tides are such a you know they come in they go out regular this clockwork every single day and so you're sitting there and you think you know 100 years ago somebody might have been sitting on this exact spot looking out at that same sea with the same tides coming in and out thinking that they had the weight of the world on their shoulders and 100 years from now somebody else will be doing it and it it kind of gave me a sense of perspective that I really needed in that moment.

37:53You stepped down before the arrest, citing burnout. It is such a fickle, brutal world, politics. Do you look back so far on your career with fondness and pride? I mean, there've been times in the last couple of years where it's been hard to do that. um but i think now yes i i do and you look back at and it's a really i think partly because of the age i am and i've done this um massive hugely privileged job um and i've stepped back from that and i'm looking to a different phase of life and i'm still relatively young very young obviously um and so it's it almost feels like a sort of transition from one chapter to another from the first kind of half of life to the second and there's something scary about that but also really energizing about it i was um sat in prep this morning at the absolute crack of dawn finishing the last bits of your book and there's one tiny little line hidden away at the top of a paragraph and about the last page it says very quietly i think i am happier now than i have ever been and I thought that was so powerful in the way it just kind of breathed out and it's true and what we've just been talking about over the last couple years I mean I would I really wish it hadn't happened don't don't misunderstand me but equally I think if that hadn't happened I'm not sure I would be sitting here saying I'm happier now than I've ever been because that experience has forced me to do a lot of soul searching it has taught me the value of friendship it's given me a different perspective on life it's taught me that and you know I've got to be careful not to kind of lapse into sort of cliche here but it has really taught me that every day you have to you have to find the joy and the happiness and the the things that are special about that day no matter what is swirling around you and how awful and dark that is and i think i wouldn't have that if the experiences the last couple of years hadn't happened the hell but it's also brought an incompletely different stage a new fresh beginning but this is you for the first time you're away from politics you're single this is a new part of your life yeah and it's as i said a moment it's it's you know there's part of me that my god how that's really terrifying but actually it's more exciting than scary and it's so for the first time in my life i don't have responsibilities i don't have ties i i literally can choose what i do next i'm in a fortunate position that i've got opportunities and what do you want to do I would like to write more.