Our Top Scots in their own words - a celebration of talent for Burns Night

From the worlds of politics, music, writing, acting and more, they all, in the words of Robert Burns, 'dare to be honest and fear no labour'.

EMELI SANDÉ, SINGER-SONGWRITER

ON MUSIC AND STRUGGLE

I want to be as open as I can be about what I’ve been through because there is no shame in talking about struggle and difficulties and getting over the other side. I feel lucky I’ve had music in my life as a therapy… I wanted to give that back and make music that can give people strength. It feels like a superpower, and I want to use it wisely, share it, give people hope and light that, yes, it’s difficult now, but you can be a survivor and shine.

ON HER INFLUENCES

Going to Zambia was a big breakthrough for me identity-wise. It was beautiful to see the country and see my grandma and aunties, the hierarchy within the village between women and the strength of the women and the responsibilities they had. The way in which they did it was with so much spirituality and emotion, it really grounded me and showed what strength can look like in other guises.

I was influenced by a lot of folk music when I was a student in Glasgow, going to open mic nights. Those lyrics are poetry. And studying Burns at school. There’s something about poetry in your own dialect that speaks to you in a specific way…

KIRSTY WARK, JOURNALIST AND BROADCASTER

ON HER MOTIVATION

I think basically I’m quite nosey, I like to know a little bit about people’s lives.

ON INTERVIEWING MARGARET THATCHER IN 1990

It’s extraordinary. It really cut through. And I think it cut through partly because she didn’t like being interviewed by women frankly, and because she just was so out of sync with Scotland. She couldn’t understand why people weren’t embracing her policies, why they wouldn’t vote for her. She just couldn’t get her head round that.

WHAT STORIES HAVE MADE THE MOST IMPRESSION ON HER?

I’ve been so lucky. Harold Pinter’s last interview. Hearing Barack Obama in 2004 at the Democratic National Convention in Boston… Also covering terrible things that have happened in Scotland and giving them grace has been very important to me, whether it’s been Lockerbie or Dunblane. But mostly, some of the people I have met who have been quite extraordinary in what they do. Everybody has a story to tell and I love bringing these stories to light… It’s not just about the famous people, I always say.

NICOLA STURGEON, POLITICIAN AND AUTHOR

ON HER MEMOIR

Hopefully my memoir is as much about the last 30 years of Scottish history, which have been quite eventful politically, as it is about me and my life. So I’m not promising I won’t ruffle anybody’s feathers, but hopefully not too much. I hope I’ve not gratuitously hurt anybody and actually there are not that many people I’ve got grievances with that I would want to do that…I’ve tried to be honest and sometimes yeah, I guess there will be accounts in my memoir that are absolutely honest from my perspective but somebody else might think ‘well my perspective on that is different’ because there are two sides to every story, but I certainly haven’t set out to write a memoir that is about settling scores because that’s of no interest to me.

ON BOOKS

I can’t imagine my life without books. It would be, frankly a life not worth much, and I have learned more through fiction about the world and history and different cultures and places than I ever would reading big, weighty non-fiction tomes, because it doesn’t just educate you and give you insight, it gives you a sense of empathy for different people and different times.

VAL MCDERMID, AUTHOR

ON THE POWER OF BOOKS

One of the main reasons I read is to be taken into somebody else’s world rather than stay inside my own existence so I can try and understand how somebody else lives their life. And if it wasn’t for books, I wouldn’t have the life I have now. I was reading a Chalet School novel and one of the characters gets a letter from her publisher with a cheque in it and that was the moment I realised, it’s a job!

SHARLEEN SPITERI, MUSICIAN

ON MOTIVATION

It’s never been about money. If you do anything for money, you’ll never make any. You’ve got to do something you believe in.

ON BEING IN A BAND

I didn’t join a band to be ‘yes sir, please sir’. That’s not me. The whole point of being in a band was because we didn’t fit in.

ON STRAIGHT TALKING

I was brought up to be nice, be kind, but also to speak my mind if I feel I’m in a situation I’m not comfortable with. I’m not about saying something nasty for effect. If people are just saying something to make people feel bad about themselves, then no, just shut your big fat gob.

ON HER LOOK

I don’t think I have a cute bone in my body. I was never cute as a kid… and I don’t do the ‘little old me thing’. It’s not really my personality at all.

JANEY GODLEY, COMEDIAN AND AUTHOR

ON HUMOUR AS AN EFFECTIVE WEAPON

I think that that’s what comedy is. You hold up a mirror to society and say this is who we are and this is what we’re doing. I think it’s important.

ON THE POWER OF HUMOUR

If somebody has a go at me and they make it funny, I’m the first to go yep, you’re right. It’s the same as the trolls online. I will defend their right to say that they hate me, because they’ve got every right to say it. I don’t have to listen to it, and I don’t have to keep watching it. I don’t want to be in a society where people who hate me are shut up; that’s no’ a society that breeds a crowd for me either. I want people to call me a c***, because if you’re told to stop calling me a c***, I cannae call Trump a c***.

ASHLEY STORRIE, WRITER, ACTOR, COMEDIAN, DJ

ON ACTING

I had always wanted to do it but been told repeatedly that being on TV or in films wasn’t going to happen for me because I don’t sound right, I don’t look right. People were trying to be kind … and for a long time I let them grind down my aspirations.

ON HER AUTISM

I worry that if I lost my autism, would I be funny? When I got diagnosed they said I probably had ADHD as well and asked if I’d like a formal diagnosis but I said no, because I don’t want medicine. I’m scared it will make my brain not as funny. I’m all for leaning into it. I think it’s the best way to be.

ON HER BAFTA-WINNING TV SHOW DINOSAUR

For people like me to see someone like them on screen, because I never felt represented, I’m excited about that.

ON HEEDING HER MOTHER JANEY GODLEY’S ADVICE

If you can’t be an inspiration, be a dire warning.

LORRAINE KELLY, JOURNALIST, TV PRESENTER AND AUTHOR

ON HER MOST EMBARRASSING MOMENTS

So many. I’ve fallen over on live TV and showed the nation my knickers while interviewing The Spice Girls and doing a high kick in their crazy platform shoes.

ON ROMANCE

I think the most romantic thing in the world is when your man empties the dishwasher. And does the clothes washing properly.

ON MAKING A DOCUMENTARY ABOUT THE LOCKERBIE BOMBING

I knew that was a story that needed to be told because some people weren’t aware of the sheer scale and the human cost and how it affected people and still affects people to this day. I wanted to give the people of Lockerbie their place, the respect, the understanding, the sympathy that they absolutely deserve, all of the people there, and of course all of the people who died.

It’s that thing of people trusting me. Most of the people I spoke to hadn’t spoken before, certainly not on air… I never take that for granted. And I think that’s partly due to the fact that I’ve been here a long time and I’m familiar to people.

SUE BLACK, FORENSIC ANTHROPOLOGIST, ANATOMIST AND ACADEMIC, MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS

ON FORENSIC ANTHROPOLOGY

I want to uncover the stories that are in remains.

ON THE AFTEREFFECTS OF WHAT SHE’S WITNESSED IN KOSOVO, SYRIA, IRAQ, THE 2004 TSUNAMI OR SIERRA LEONE.

I genuinely don’t care if the hoover goes round the floor. I don’t care if there’s a scratch on my car. But I did care that my children got a hug and a kiss every single night before they went to bed. These things remind you of the frailty of human life and what IS important.

ON FEET

I hate feet. They’re horrible. Difficult to dissect and often contained inside socks and a shoe and by the time you have to turn a sock inside out, it is this horrible sort of gloop with lumps of bone and lumps of toenails in it. I just think feet are very unattractive. But they ARE really useful. Sometimes they’re the only thing that’s presented to us, because feet, inside their floatation devices - shoes - are washed up. So they’re very, very useful. But I don’t have to like them.

ON THE DEAD

I’m never spooked by the dead, only by the living. The dead are incredibly well behaved, don’t make a noise, move around, surprise you, but the living do. The living are the ones that we need to be afraid of.

IRVINE WELSH, AUTHOR

IS CHOOSE LIFE STILL A VALID MANTRA?

I hope it always is because if you fundamentally believe in humanity you have to believe in youth, and when you talk to young people, they are ‘this is shit, there’s f*** all for us but it’s still good to be young, f*** you, you old bastards. So I think there’s always going to be that core of possibility.

ON WONDERING IF HE’S EVER TAKEN IT TOO FAR IN HIS BOOKS

It’s like I always have to feel really terrible about something before I know it’s any good. I always have that thing ‘what’s my mum going to think of this?’ ‘What’s my wife going to think of this? And if I don’t have that feeling of utter, ‘f***! I’m really putting myself out for a massive kind of social embarrassment and all that’, I start to feel terrible. I’ve got to have that edge to everything that I do.

JIM KERR, MUSICIAN, SIMPLE MINDS

ON BEING ON STAGE IN HIS SIXTIES

When people ask me how I do it, I say I can’t do it in real life! It’s happened a few times that someone says ‘my man put his back out at a wedding trying to do the Jim Kerr thing’ and I think ‘well, I would put my back out as well!’ But on stage something happens with the music. I think it’s adrenalin. I get all bendy.

We’ve been incredibly fortunate. Never mind all the trinkets and the beautiful experiences, those three things that we wanted - a great live band - we have been able to have.

ON PLAYING BENEFIT GIGS

That’s the way we were brought up, to have empathy, and if you can help, you help. Every tour we feel it’s right to try and make some kind of gesture.

SAM HEUGHAN, ACTOR

WHAT DO YOU KEEP IN YOUR SPORRAN?

The usual. Lip balm, iPhone, protein bar, sides to the scene [notes when filming], hip flask, eye drops, compass, deck of cards, sunglasses, various Scottish stones and small mementos I’ve pilfered from set. It’s like the Mary Poppin’s bag, or the Tardis.

ON BEING THE ONLY PERSON IN THE OUTLANDER CAST WHO KNOWS THE ENDING OF THE STORY

I do sometimes think oh god, am I going to say something?

ON SOLITUDE

I think it’s a constant battle, a struggle with myself, that I do crave being alone, but it’s always around other people. Covid was definitely a moment that we all realised that we miss people, we miss interaction, and we are social animals.

BILLY CONNOLLY, COMEDIAN AND ARTIST

WHY HIS FAVOURITE HERO TO MEET IS BOB DYLAN

Because he never knows you the next time you meet him. It’s very odd. When you leave him you’re the best of friends, it’s “Cheerio Bob!’ and ‘All the best Billy!’ then you meet him again and he looks at you like he’s never seen you in his life!

ON YODELLING

I used to be a very good yodeller but it’s starting to disappear. I think that happens with age anyway though. Chic Murray was a great yodeller, and women are good – the girl in The Cranberries, very good.

ON HIS STORY ABOUT ‘STICKING HIS WILLY IN A G&T IN EDINBURGH’S TRAVERSE THEATRE BAR

“That’s true. I was banned. Then they had an exhibition of photographs and invited me in to see it and I said ‘but I’m banned’, so they lifted the ban for the night. Then they lifted it completely. So I’ve been back.

BUT NOT REPEATED THE OFFENCE?

No, I don’t stick my willy in a gin and tonic any more.

SO HE’S MOVED ON FROM THAT?

I gave up drinking. I still have the willy.

ON HIS COMEDY

I never wrote jokes, or stories either. I just went on stage and said stuff. Ad-libbed. It just comes to me. Sometimes in huge lumps – there’s one about a wildebeest that’s 15 or 20 minutes long – sometimes it’s just a word.

BRIAN COX, ACTOR

ON AWARDS

I got the Golden Globe … and it was lovely, but you can’t take them seriously. You cannot live your life by Oscars and stuff like that otherwise you’ll go nuts. You’d go absolutely mental. It’s about The Work and it’s always about The Work.

ON BEING A WORKAHOLIC

I still have issues with poverty. It will always hang over me like a damoclean sword… I’m a workaholic and the reason is because I think I can’t afford not to work, you know?

ON SUCCESSION FANS

They all want you to tell them to f** off. I was playing Lyndon Johnson in the theatre [on Broadway in 2019] and there were these kids, young couples with the phones, and they said ‘Mr Cox, could you tell me and my boyfriend to f*** off please?’ Sure. ‘Are you ready, ok, f** off!’

JACK LOWDEN, ACTOR

ON CHARACTER

I loved playing Darnley. Obviously he was an arse but it comes from some deep-seated insecurity. It’s fun to play weak characters. I’ve no interest in playing the finished product kind, it’s boring. I’m not a finished product and I struggle playing them. But when they have great big flaws, I grab onto them like, and run with it.

ON ACTING

When I first started I thought in a sort of arrogant way that actors were fannies and spoilt and you just turn up and say something, but the longer I worked, and then getting a chance to produce and see the other side, they really are the magical bit. Because a film set is like a building site, all these guys walking aboot with North Face jackets with lighting and sound stuff, and then the actor comes out in the middle and someone says ‘right, you’ve lost your daughter, go’.

GORDON RAMSAY, CHEF AND RESTAURANTER

ON SHOUTING

Do you think I come here to scream and shout? It’s important when the shit hits the fan to deal with it, but the trade’s moved on and I’ve moved on. Do I run a restaurant the way I did in 1999? Of course I don’t.

ON FOOD

One thing that attracts me about Scotland is the produce, because it’s second to none. That’s something I got used to at a young age working in Paris, seeing it coming to the best restaurants in France.

ON CHILDHOOD

I grew up with my mum having three jobs. I grew up watching my mum work her arse off, and grew up with the utmost respect for my mum.

ON BEING SCOTTISH

I think things happen for a reason. That was one thing Scotland taught me - don’t sit and cry over spilt milk. Get off and look for the next cow.