1. My kids

MY kids are everything to me. I’ve got two wee boys. My youngest had a pretty tough start to life being quite premature and my eldest was born just a few months before the Covid pandemic started.

It was obviously a brilliant experience to have our kid but then to have the pandemic was obviously quite challenging with the separation from family and your support network. And then for my second son to have his health difficulties was quite a challenge. But they’re brilliant.

They can completely change your perspective on what you think is important, and what’s actually important. They’re the focus of everything that I do and everything that my wife does.

Just trying to make sure they’re happy is a big deal. Folk think what do you want your kid to do and we are pretty simple: we want them to be happy and have a smile on their face.

My kids are definitely number one.

2. Dundee United

MY other love - Dundee United.

The misery that they’ve brought me throughout my life has toughened my exterior to say the least.

I’ve been going to see United since I was born. I think my mum used to take us in her pram if I believe in her stories and I’ve had a season ticket since 1995. It’s been a huge part of my life.

Spending weekends with my dad, my pals and my younger brother, it’s just something we’ve always done and will continue to do.

READ MORE: Mhairi Black: Any shift to the right will kill the SNP

Even now I’m in Aberdeen there’s few things I enjoy more than jumping on the train to Tannadice watching United invariably get beat.

I’ve been some grim places with United and seen some pretty embarrassing defeats but ultimately the enjoyment you get from football and that sense of camaraderie is great. The ability to let go of some energy is also something to shout home about.

3. My wife

ME and my wife have been together for a long time now. When we met I was at university and she was at university.

At different points in your life you’re trying to figure out who you are and she’s always been brilliant for me in terms of pointing me in the right direction, providing support and being the most honest critic I could possibly ever ask for or want. We’ve got a really strong relationship. I wouldn’t be able to do the job that I am doing without her.

She’s got a really good career in her own right as a principal teacher up in Aberdeen and I’m always very mindful of the sacrifices that she’s made in order to support our family and to allow me to do what I need to do to follow the things that I believe in.

She’s the best person I know.

4. Aberdeen

WHEN I was a kid we moved around a lot. I was in Dundee, then we moved up to Brechin then back to Dundee. We stayed in lots of different places and I went to lots of different schools.

When I moved up to Aberdeen, 12 years ago now, I would never have envisaged that it would become home in the way it has. And it is very much home for us. That’s where our heart is, it’s where we’ve had our two boys.

It’s where we enjoy all Aberdeen has to offer, in terms of its parks, its beaches, its nightlife – I’ve certainly enjoyed that over the years – and certainly how close it is to the beautiful countryside of Aberdeenshire.

It’s always nice, certainly for me having moved around a fair bit, to have some place you regard as home and to go back home to Aberdeen after a week in London is always something I look forward to.

5. The SNP

I MIND one of the first times I went out to campaign and I was folding letters and putting them in envelopes and I was sat at the table with guys who are significantly older than I was and I was just listening to their stories of the party and how long they’d been campaigning for independence and I realised how much effort some folk had put in over decades. From when the party was nowhere near as successful as what it is now.

Winning a council seat would’ve been a big thing. And being able to share that experience with them was quite humbling.

The friendship that I still have with them and so many people in the party has been phenomenal. It has been like a big family for me up in Aberdeen with the SNP. The likes of Kevin Stewart and Jackie Dunbar, two the best people you could ever possibly want to meet. Being able to count on them and having their support over the years as a grassroots activist, as a councillor, as a group leader, as an MP and as a group leader again is great.

READ MORE: New poll puts SNP and Greens to command 23-seat majority in Holyrood

That spirit of everyone being aligned in what they’re wanting to achieve, we all want Scotland to be independent and now that cuts across the generations, it’s great to be a part of and I am very fortunate to know so many good people and I know them because of the party.

6 My disability

I HAD avascular necrosis which is basically, in layman’s terms, when the blood stops flowing to the bone and then the bone dies and breaks so when I was walking bits of the bone were breaking off. And it took a long time to realise what was wrong with me.

I spent a lot of time in and out of hospital. That was lifechanging for me.

Being 13-14-year-old and having your physical mobility taken from you was quite a challenging experience and having that lack of mobility throughout my teens and early 20s, it shapes you.

You experience things in a different way, you have to overcome things both physically and mentally that you probably never would have envisaged that you’d have to. You experience abuse, you experience pressure and that, when I was younger, forced me to regulate who I was and what I wanted to do in life.

READ MORE: Questions asked of BBC after 'uninviting' SNP to Question Time panel

All my pals wanted to be a PE teacher, or you’ll leave school at 16 and take on a trade so I had to pick up a book and read and educate myself. I knew I had to.

But out of that misery, because it was a very dark place to be in, came something which was good which was an education.

Free education in Scotland meant I could go to university and do the things I wanted to do. That was all borne out of what happened to us and subsequent to that when I got my hip replacement two years ago that was completely lifechanging.

I had my thigh bone chopped and a metal hip put in. It allowed me the ability to do things I’ve always wanted to do like go for a walk without being in chronic pain, I get to bash around on soft play with my kids, I get to occasionally go for a wee jog on the beach with my boys and my dog.

It’s one of the best things that’s happened to me and of course it’s thanks to the NHS in Scotland.

7. The Tartan Army

I LOVE it. I absolutely love it. There are few things more enjoyable in life than going somewhere in Europe with a group of folks who support different club teams, all getting together and all having one focus which is having a party after Scotland get beat. Just how positive it is and perhaps most importantly of all is how positive everyone is of us.

I’ve been to so many places with the Tartan Army and the reaction we get from people is so nice and heart-warming. People want to chat with you about Scotland and everything Scotland means and it’s a really good example of soft diplomatic power I think and as the song goes no Scotland no party.

8. My gran

MY gran was probably my favourite person growing up. She was the kindest soul possible. Didn’t have a flash life by any manner of means but was always there for us and her multiple grandkids. Just a proper heart of gold and growing up knowing that after the football you’d go back to hers and have a homemade fish was just a huge part of growing up and a good childhood.

I think there’s some folks in your life who stick with you after they’re gone and she’s very much always in my thoughts just because of how nice she was and I like to think that rubbed off on us, myself, my brother and my sister in how we deal with other people.

I always see the good in things, and the good in people and I see that as the starting point. There’s a wee set of dominos that I used to play with her, old fashioned ones I’ve still got, that sit out in the house and I’m looking forward to playing dominos with my boys one day and hopefully pass them onto them and they can pass them on as a wee reminder of her.

9. Bruce Springsteen

I LOVE his music. I like music where the artist is telling stories. So I love a wee bit of Bob Dylan and Richard Thompson just now. Not my colleague Richard Thomson, he is magic on the fiddle but he’s no Richard Thompson the artist.

I like music where they tell stories and I thinkThe Boss tells the best stories when he’s singing.

I’ve had the good fortune of seeing him in many, many different places including the States and it’s a fair show he puts on.

Back in the day, being able to put a Springsteen CD on was always a good way of chilling out and occasionally I stick him on Spotify now just to provide some calm to the political storms that are just afoot.

10. My pals

THEY’RE an eclectic bunch. We’ve got a great bunch of guys. Welders, scientists, doctors – right across the spectrum of jobs and employment and they all keep me humble and very rightly so.

It’s nice when you’re doing your politics to have the folk you spend a lot of time with at work and there’s definitely folk I work with who I consider pals but it’s always nice to have your friends at home who are completely detached from this world, thankfully, and are more just interested in criticising you and telling you that you look daft or something.

Sometimes you need that, to be able to separate yourself and to take yourself and your mind away from politics and my pals are great at that.

A lot of folk, their entire life is politics and I get it because it’s all encompassing but I’ve thankfully managed to retain a little bit of separation and that’s primarily due to my family, my boys and my pals.

They’re a good bunch of lads and I just wish I got to spend more time back home with them.