Aidan Smith: Annabel Goldie risks becoming a national institution, despite her politics

Published on Saturday 23 April 2011 10:16

THE leader of the Scottish Conservatives, possibly our most famous spinster, is describing the previous evening at home. Nipping into Marks & Spencer, Annabel Goldie bought a microwaveable meal and some fruit - "otherwise there's a very good chance I could catch scurvy." She doesn't normally drink through the week but she popped a mini bottle of wine in her bag - "Such a handy size" - and an hour later there she was, crying into her sauvignon blanc.

"Did you see that programme on TV last night?" This was Long Lost Family, a cross between Who Do You Think You Are? and Surprise, Surprise, and Goldie was particularly taken with the story of a woman not much older than her (she's 61) who was reunited with a twin sister found living three miles away. "Absolute buckets," she confirms. "Yes, Nicky Campbell did an excellent job, although I didn't know his co-presenter, dark hair, Carol someone... " I think I'm going to like Goldie. There should be more people - not just in key posts like hers, but generally - who are blissfully ignorant of Davina McCall.

We're at the Tunnock's factory in Uddingston. "(Alex] Salmond is campaigning two miles down the road from my house so I came here," she chortles in her lilac suit. Really, though, it's no hardship for Scotland's couthiest politician to be touring the production lines for Scotland's couthiest biscuits. Although oldest employee Bob Cunningham, 82, was joking beforehand that the Tories could squeeze their entire Scottish representation into the tiny, antique, maroon and gold liveried van parked outside the plant, she is soon charming the regulation safety hairnets off everyone with tales of how her visit is "the fulfilment of a dream since the age of five and three-quarters", the young Annabel having been presented with her first Caramel Wafer by her Auntie Bessie.

She's fascinated by the robot which, at great speed, sucks up the Teacakes for packaging without, of course, denting them. If she makes a comparison with the delicate-but-decisive parliamentary manoeuvring which she hopes will be required to further Tory causes in the wake of the election, then it's drowned out by the thrum.

Holyrood 2011 coverage in full

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• Eddie Barnes: concerns of leaking support in once-solid constituencies is a measure of the task facing Iain Gray

• Kenny Farquharson: What Labour needs is some six appeal

• Aidan Smith: Annabel Goldie risks becoming a national institution, despite her politics

• Target voters: OAPs

• John Curtice: The OAP vote

• Peter Ross: Socialists who go it alone

But these Teacakes are already foil-wrapped; Goldie wants to see an earlier stage in the process, one I may just be able to get away with describing as orgasmic. I'm in good position for reaction to the moment when a conveyor-belt of half-moon mallows is glooped with chocolate. The transformation from white to brown is hypnotic. "This is stress therapy," she declares. And the smell is pretty addictive as well.

"Hang on, everybody, I'm inhaling!"

Who does Annabel Goldie think she is? I reckon she knows, better than you, usually getting her deprecation in first. Battling Bella, No-Bullshit Bella (as premiered on Radio 4 the other day), the parly's tablet-making, sensible maiden aunt, doughty doyenne of the doilies, Chic Murray in a frock, reunions secretary (Scotland) of the Mallory Towers FPs, Daphne Broon. And, confident about the appeal of her "common-sense politics", she insists the campaign isn't stressing her at all."As long as I'm regularly fed and watered I'll sleep well and can keep going. I like my sleep and won't boast about getting by on two and a half hours." Since she mentioned Maggie Thatcher, sort of, how often does she think about the former leaderene?

"An interesting question. Honestly, not too often." A great PM, though. And how often does she think about Salmond? "Only when I have to!"

I had been expecting sternness, like in a nits inspection or that momentous day when small boys are required by the school nurse to cough on demand. She's warmer than that, though, and doesn't mind when I try to divert her off politics. Some might view this as a flaw; I'm impressed that, when asked for a joke, she right away delivers: "He married her for her looks but not the ones she gives him now."

Political junkies are fascinated by the Salmond-Goldie special relationship, the merry banter, the flirting, Goldie getting her way on 1,000 extra police. Does she like him? "It doesn't matter whether he's the most charming man on Earth or absolutely repugnant - politics drives this. I can tease and taunt, get angry and give him a roasting but there's mutual respect."

Others are fascinated by her spinster's life, as if she's keeping One-is-Fun meals profitable all by herself.

We've peeked in her fridge and that didn't detain us long - what's on her bookshelves? Biographies, mostly - of Hardy, Pepys, current fave Ellen "Nelly" Ternan ("Dickens' other woman!") and the bold Chic. She definitely takes the Murray comparisons as a compliment although there's a bit of Tommy Cooper in her grin and she pronounces "modern" as "modren". The last person I heard do that was Stanley Baxter mimicking his mother.

On TV she prefers documentaries though will watch comedy as long as it's "subtle". She loves Miranda Hart. "I impersonate her all the time: 'Such fun! … Bear with!' And I love that she's completely comfy in her skin." Goldie, of course, is that too. So how would she be caricatured by Spitting Image if it were still around? "As a carnaptious, overweight old bat, for sure." She once said her ambition was "to cook a three-course dinner for eight without a flap".Hart and Murray would certainly be invited - who else? David Cameron ("That's not sycophancy, he's one of the most stimulating politicians I know"), Alexander McCall Smith ("Scintillating mind"), Churchill, Oscar Wilde, "that actor with the lovely silver hair (George Clooney] … oh, and Libby McArthur, the caf owner in River City." No room for Salmond, then? A harrumph. "If the dinner was to be about collective conversation I'm not sure how he'd fit in."

Goldie may not seem especially "modren". Some expect young dynamism to come riding over the hill for Scottish Toryism any day now. Others probably want her to stay minding the shop, a comedy leader. But don't patronise her. Though a spinster, her life is far from being unfulfilled. "I love politics and campaigns. It would be lovely to have had a family but I'm a great believer in enjoying life as it is, not retiring into a corner, getting out there." Could she yet meet the right person? "Yes, I'd like to think I could." But not in the next 12 days, she's got an election to fight. As Miranda would say: "Bear with!"