Tim Cornwell: Nat show needs 007 – and better songs

I’M A sucker for historic events, so I sneaked out on Friday morning to the Yes Scotland launch, hoping for a taste of one. The excuse was a promised line up of cultural stars turning out to back Scottish independence, at Cineworld in Fountain Park (screen 7).

But if the Nats are going to get the independence show down the road, they’ve got to sharpen up their song and dance act. They’re still missing Sir Sean Connery. Even into his 70s, as his big films became things of the past, Connery was screen royalty; his mere presence could lift the room and make a story. He didn’t have to make the nationalist case, he somehow enshrined it.

This time he wasn’t even present on the screen. It was left to actor Martin Compston to host the event – surprisingly nervous, speaking in rapid, swallowed phrases, and oddly, making flimsy asides about his own bad reviews. He garbled out an anodyne message from the “big man” Connery so badly you hardly noticed it.

I liked the opening movie – it had a wind farm, a suitably small one, and mountain biking. There was even a nice young man with an English accent.

We had two of Scotland’s best-known and most interesting actors: Alan Cumming and Brian Cox. The national poet, Liz Lochhead. Fittingly, a filmed appearance by the country’s most thoughtful novelist James Robertson.

Cumming was sprite-like and to the point. Cox gave a ten-minute speech on his conversion from the voice of New Labour to saying “Yes” that was moving and interesting. Its theme was you leave when you’re young and later feel the call of home, whether you actually move back or not, ahem.

Lochhead picked a passage on the two Queens and two countries from her play Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off – cheeky and funny, and comfortable in its own skin on the subject of England and Scotland.

If Cox and Lochhead were king and queen of the place I’d happily follow them to Culloden, so maybe I should just line up and sign Alex Salmond’s declaration-thingy right now. (I’d rather sign the Declaration of Arbroath, it’s much more red-blooded.)

But for all this talent, you felt it was only a warm-up act, for a headliner who didn’t appear.

We were subjected to Dougie Maclean singing the insipid lyrics of Caledonia, so 70s you half expect soft fades of Farrah Fawcett. There was a young Scottish singer Lou Hickey, with a new song about self-confidence. Film shots of an architect, Alastair Stephen, an actor and film-maker, Tim Barrow, plus a big name check for the Proclaimers.

Will this connect at a young, broad, persuasive level with the Scottish electorate?

What was needed was a big shot out of left field to give independence buzz. Somebody hip and unexpected, edgy and international, or with a kind of shine you want to touch. To give nationalism back its cultural cool, without trying too hard, to make it less old-fashioned. Someone who’d stir them up at T in the Park. Or just a couple of really good comedians.

They’ve got two years to make the case, so you assume there was a game plan here: shore up the base, convert the Labourites, rally the Greens, get the million signatures. But will the Yes Scotland camp manage to add Paolo Nutini or Nicola Benedetti? Even Susan Boyle?

We won’t be missing dear old Sandi Thom, the punk rocker with flowers in her hair, whose flirtation with Mr Salmond over shared singsongs ended when she billed him for lavish breakfasts.

Once upon a time Donald Trump would have spiced things up.

They certainly won’t get opera singer Karen Cargill, or composer James Macmillan, both avowed unionists.

Neither, more broadly, were there Scottish Turner Prize winners, who in my experience are more apt to describe themselves as Glasgow internationalists, rather than Scottish with a capital S.

It will be interesting to see who the unionists can turn out, and what anthem they will choose. It may be that among top artists, as in the country, the majority are against independence.

Maybe the campaign is cleverer than we think, or maybe I misinterpreted the audience by sitting next to a Reuters correspondent who was judging it for global impact, not for the effect on the home crowd. But culturally, it was preaching to the converted, and they’re going to have to do better than that.