Nicola Sturgeon has said JK Rowling is obsessed with her, but aren’t we all? Wherever I am, whatever I’m doing, it’s Nicola Sturgeon I’m thinking about. What are her views on Scottish independence? What are her views on trans rights? What’s her husband up to these days? Will she ever appear at a festival to talk about her book? The questions go on and on and, just like JK, I am totally and utterly obsessed.

So forgive me if I indulge the obsession one more time today by talking about what Ms Sturgeon has been saying at the Fringe. The former first minister was appearing with the broadcaster Iain Dale who asked her if she wanted an amnesty with Ms Rowling. “If we’re going to get an amnesty, I think it’s probably going to have to come from her,” said Ms Sturgeon. “We disagree on more than one thing – we disagree about independence, we clearly disagree on trans rights. My god, that woman is obsessed with me.”

Mr Dale also put the subject of Scottish education to Ms Sturgeon and read an audience question from a former teacher who said they’d moved to England because of the “failing Scottish education system”. Ms Sturgeon was having none of it and said education in Scotland had its challenges, as all education systems do, but that the narrative that Scottish education was failing was nonsense.

She also made another general point on how people talk about Scotland. “Let's not talk ourselves down,” she said. “Let's tackle problems where they are, but not allow ourselves to be talked into this kind of media narrative that everything in the country's s***, because it really, really isn't.” Note “media narrative” and “talk ourselves down”: this is Sturgeon on tour with the........

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