NICOLA Sturgeon should have “hung on to” the late Queen Elizabeth and told the UK Government they would not get her body until they agreed to a second Scottish independence referendum, crime writer Val McDermid has joked.
The moment came as McDermid and Sturgeon appeared on stage for a Books and Banter show as part of Glasgow’s International Comedy Festival.
The pair, who are known to be good friends, had joked about a possible return to frontline politics for Sturgeon – who was last week cleared of wrongdoing after a years-long police probe into the SNP finances.
Sturgeon – who has said she will step down as an MSP after 27 years at next year’s elections – prompted cheers from the audience after saying that she “might change [her] mind”.
However, the former first minister added: “For the benefit of all of the journalists in the room, that was a joke. One of those things you’re meant to laugh at, not put on a front page.”
Audience members laughed and shouted out, with one saying something about a queen. “She is the queen,” another responded.
The exchange prompted McDermid to say: “I still think you let us down over the Queen though.
"When she died, you should have hung on to her and said to them, you don’t get the Queen back until you give us another referendum.”
After applause from the audience, Sturgeon said in response that the parts marked in red pen are “the parts you’re not meant to read out”.
Queen Elizabeth died at Balmoral in September 2022 at age 96. Her funeral procession passed through Aberdeenshire and Dundee before travelling up the Royal Mile to St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh, before the coffin was sent back down to London.
Elsewhere, Sturgeon said she had been “starstruck” when she saw McDermid during the first independence referendum.
"I had fangirled about you,” the SNP politician told the writer. “One day, in the midst of the independence referendum I had been in my – for the purposes of the Daily Mail – my ministerial limo going through Edinburgh, and I saw Val walking down the street reading a book as she went.
"I was like, 'that's Val McDermid!'. I was starstruck."
