Turning up for the Irn Bru lady...

SHE KNOWS how to work a room, that Nicola Sturgeon, even outdoors. It might be technically possible to be pit oot of an open-air restaurant but it’s unlikely that the flavour-of-the-month First Minister would find herself pit oot of anything, except Ed Miliband’s Christmas card list.

We hacks weren’t offered a hurl in the claret-coloured “Nickicopter” that has put the gas of a certain sweetie pink battlebus at a peep, as Ms Sturgeon arrived to go walkabout in Dundee and St Andrews in support of candidates Chris Law of Dundee West and Stephen Gethins of North East Fife. Her ice blue suit matched the morning’s temperatures on Dundee Law but the atmosphere was lightened somewhat when a pundit from Sky News suddenly noticed that the landmark and the candidate had the same name. Not much escapes those at journalism’s cutting edge, does it...

Leaving not a cliche unexposed, the BBC’s James Cook turned up with a cardboard box of Rough and Fraser’s renowned pastry savouries. A deep debate then ensued between the aptly named Mr Cook and SNP depute leader Stewart Hosie about the relative merits of shortcrust and flaky, a wonderful name for a PR company if ever I heard one.

More surgeon than Sturgeon, the Irn Bru lady didn’t so much forensically fillet the cod-Prime Ministerial posturings of Ed Miliband, as butcher them, vacuum pack them and flog them off for pet food. He had not only lost the plot, he had “hammered the final nail into the coffin of Scottish Labour”, like a kind of reincarnated Edward Longshanks.

Posing for and taking selfies galore, Ms Sturgeon (and her nude stilettoes) effortlessly negotiated both cobbles and finding herself in the frame with the feline bust of St Andrews’ own Hamish McHamish, plus the attentions of Oskar the dog in Dundee.

Apparently she’s scared of dogs. If I were Ed Miliband, I’d be in the queue down Battersea Dogs Home first thing Monday morning...