Nicola Sturgeon’s first job? Selling potato scones door to door

Nicola Sturgeon said she was “terrible” at the job and hated it so much she used to get her father to do it for her.

Taking part in First Minister’s Question Time Next Generation in Edinburgh, run by charities Children in Scotland and Youthlink Scotland, the SNP leader also revealed she gets on average five or six hours of sleep a night.

An audience of 100 young people questioned Ms Sturgeon on a wide range of topics.

Asked what her first job was, she said: “My very first job was selling tattie scones round the doors in Dreghorn where I grew up and I hated it so much that I used to get my dad to do it for me.

“I was terrible at the tattie scone round.”

Questioned on how many hours of sleep she gets a night, Ms Sturgeon replied “not enough”.

She added: “Probably an average of about five or six a night. That is not enough for you guys, so you need to get a lot more sleep than that.”

Ms Sturgeon also revealed that although she does not watch a lot of TV, she likes to watch soap operas.

She said: “I quite like Coronation Street and I like River City, those are probably the ones that I would tend to switch on to switch off my brain a little bit.”

Several questions focused on mental health and social media pressures, and the First Minister said she had been subjected to bullying and threats online but tries not to look at those sorts of comments.

She said: “If I was to go and search, which I don’t and I’m not going to, but if I was going to search my name on Twitter it would probably be pretty horrific what came up.

“I know all female politicians get a lot of that. Male politicians get it a bit too but I think there’s a particular issue for women in politics, in public life, anybody that puts their head above the parapet in any sense.

“And we’ve all got to stand against that.

“Bullies have always been out there and people that want to hurl abuse have always been out there but social media gives them access to people that they never had before.”

Ms Sturgeon called on social media companies to take more action to safeguard their users.

She added: “There’s a big responsibility for governments, for parents, for schools, but there’s a big responsibility for the companies that make millions and billions of pounds out of these platforms and I’m not sure yet if they are properly taking those responsibilities as seriously as they should be.”