The Mysterious Mr Murrell

Ransacking the little that remains of my memory, I can find no trace of Peter Murrell, which frankly - to remind you of the title of his wife’s autobiography - I find odd. Why? Because we must over the years have frequently inhabited the same room. There was a wedding reception, SNP victory celebrations at Prestonfield House and the Jam House in Edinburgh, election night counts in the north-east, party conferences, many of which events I attended in my role initially as a journalist and as Alex Salmond’s “putative” (his word) biographer. At none do I recall ever exchanging even a ‘howdy’ with the elusive, enigmatic Mr Morrell.

Nor, it seems, was I alone in not registering him. Following his admission of guilt, there have been numerous ‘The Peter Murrell I Knew’ pieces, almost all of which amount to a hill of beans. One sympathises, for here is a man who was at the core of Nationalist success for decades, who was critical to Salmond’s election as SNP leader and ascent to First Minister, yet of whom there is vanishingly little to report.

The odd couple

Take, for instance, David Torrance’s admirably thorough book, Salmond: Against the Odds. In its 300-plus pages, there are just seven references to Mr Murrell, none of which could be described as significant. He is named in lists and quoted cursorily, and then fades into the background despite the fact that he had been the party’s Chief Executive since 2001.

All of this changed when in 2010 he married Nicola Sturgeon, the most famous Scottish woman since Mary, Queen of Scots. I say ‘all’ but how much really did change? While she was ubiquitous Mr Murrell was by and large inconspicuous. They would go together to a polling station and would be seen holding hands at official functions and chatting amiably. For the most part they seemed as happily married as any couple in the public eye. And so they were as far as we can tell until he and she were arrested as part of Operation Branchform and he was subsequently charged.

That, as Ms Sturgeon has said, was one of the worst days of her life. There have been a few more of these during the past decade or so, among them the arrest and trial (and acquittal) of Salmond, her erstwhile mentor and promoter. Their falling out has been described as the stuff of Shakespearian tragedy, though no one says which tragedy - Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet, take your pick.

It is hard to keep up with every twist and turn of a saga that is unlikely to end soon. At some point, however, Mr Murrell will have his say as will Ms Sturgeon. Like the rest of us, she says she does not recognise the man she married and that she had no knowledge of his wanton accumulation of Mont Blanc pens, salt and pepper grinders and thousand-pound coffee makers. As someone who swears by Bialetti’s stove-top coffee pots (available on occasion on discount at TK Maxx), I am intrigued by Mr Murrell’s purchase of not one but three machines. I am similarly intrigued by his wife’s insistence that she either knew nothing of such purchases or that she believed he had the means to buy them with his own money. We do know, though, that, speaking on Desert Island Discs, Ms Sturgeon chose a coffee machine as her luxury. We also know - because she said so - that she did not spend a lot of time in her kitchen. And we know, too, because her friend Ian Blackford said so, that “Nicola does not have a passion for cooking, it’s not something she does.”

Many women - a few of whom I know - embrace that sentiment. It does not make them bad people, as it does not make Nicola Sturgeon a bad person. Muriel Spark regarded cooking as a flagrant waste of time and - on the advice of her mother - determined to have nothing to do it with it if at all possible. Still, surely even the least domestic of goddesses would have noticed coffee makers coming and going and perhaps raised an eyebrow at their appearance, disappearance and reappearance.

I am making a meal of this because Ms Sturgeon has said previously that once shot of politics she would like to morph into a novelist. Her love of books is one of her most appealing traits. I cheered when she said, “I wish more political leaders read fiction,” because it increases their empathy and understanding of people.

One would love to hear how she might relate this to her current travails and the mysterious Mr Murrell. The best fiction writers are perceptive, observant and curious about the world around them and are constantly watching, eavesdropping, interpreting and trying to make sense of things. Nothing much escapes their gaze. Their senses are more finely tuned than those of other mortals. They look and learn and are alive to that which feels suspect.

That Ms Sturgeon did not appreciate that her husband was acting oddly suggests she is not yet ready to embrace a fiction writing career. This is a pity since she has boundless material at her disposal. If nothing else, the Scottish Parliament from its reconvening has been a source of one drama after another, as First Ministers came and went, sometimes ingloriously, and countless MSPs of all stripes have succumbed to human frailty. That none of this has been reflected in serious literature is baffling. Aren’t any of our novelists capable of tackling the subject and transforming it into a Caledonian version of Bonfire of the Vanities? Anyone interested should apply for a grant from the always benevolent Cremative Scotland.