For those of you who have never attended the annual conference of a major political party, the Fear of Missing Out will never haunt what remains of your life. You may not be sympathetic to the work of the press, but when it comes to these annual jamborees I think we perform a vital public service. We attend these events so that you don’t have to.

Is it worth risking your mental health or even just your sense of proportion and balance to expose yourself to hours of very zealous people telling you that there is no greater force for good than The Party?

Not so very long ago, the SNP conferences were actually quite jolly occasions where the influence of the activist/payroll clientele had been diminished by the presence of multitudes of real people with normal everyday challenges. They’d been drawn to the SNP because, well … they seemed less cynical and more homespun and accessible than Labour and the Tories.

There was also the merest hint around 2011 that you were no longer required to have been an aide to the social and policy convenor of Glasgow University’s young nationalist group to stand a chance of being considered for a shot on the swings. Or have a direct bloodline to the man who held open the door of the car that took Winnie Ewing to the count at Hamilton in 1967.

There was a sense that you were no longer required to quote entire passages of Mel Gibson’s dialogue in Braveheart or have a ponytail and pamphlets about how Scotland invented everything and was the most intellectually sophisticated country in the world. Or claim that Scotland had been mentioned prominently in the Dead Sea Scrolls until MI6 had bribed Mossad to........

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