1. Quitting Labour for the SNP

I JOINED the Labour club at Edinburgh University, when Gordon Brown was its president.

In 1974 I was out campaigning in the south of Scotland. I drove the candidate around the constituency, then went home and voted SNP. I felt it was the only way we’d get a fairer Scotland.

I made my mind up on the bus back into Edinburgh, thinking “I want all the things that Labour says it wants, but if this is how we are going to get it, it’s never going to happen – so we need a Scottish Parliament”.

The SNP was not treated in the 70s as in any way a serious political force. It was seen as a romantic indulgence or a hobby, but not as something that could achieve anything or that should be paid attention.

My father, who eventually joined, said he didn’t know why I was involved, as it would never lead to anything.

My grandfather was a publisher born in Abbots Langley in Hertfordshire and he couldn’t have conceived that there would be a Scottish Parliament or a Scottish Government, and still less that his grandson would be a member working to achieve Scottish independence.

When I quit Labour for the SNP, I don’t think anyone was surprised, going by the way I’d been talking in the last couple of weeks of the campaign.

2. Benbecula

Photograph: Tony Barrett

I WENT to live in the Western Isles in 1977 when I was 24. I’d been brought up in Ayrshire, gone to Edinburgh University and most of my friends thought I’d gone mad when I applied for a job running a mobile cinema circuit and production unit on Benbecula.

I’d developed an interest in Gaelic culture and all sorts of things rural. The first month, the wind didn’t go below force eight but for a single day.

The temporary accommodation I was living in was a caravan in the lee of an old ruin.

I came home one night and there was snow lying on the bed. That was the start of what became a lifelong interest in the islands.

I still get a wee kick when I’m on a ferry going somewhere. Standing on the back with a wind behind you, there’s a feeling of excitement and promise. Most young people get to know themselves and grow up a bit at university, but it wasn’t like that for me because my grandparents lived there, so I’d always visited, and Benbecula was that sort of experience for me. I met my wife there at the petrol pumps when I went to fuel-up and she cut in front of me. That night we found ourselves sitting together at the diner, and the rest is history. She was from the island and had come home to teach.

3. Whisky Galore

I AM the only qualified projectionist sitting in the Scottish Parliament and I must have shown Whisky Galore more than 70 times on the mobile cinema circuit. I can give you the dialogue. It was a real favourite at the time. The biggest disaster I ever had was with the first film ever shown on Berneray in the old hall, which was a Nissen hut left over from wartime. It was Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a whole feature length film with no humans in it. At the end, an old guy said: “We really enjoyed that, but we do see a few seagulls here.” It was probably not a wise scheduling decision. I don’t go to the movies now as much as I used to, but at that time it was an extraordinary thing.

4. Celtic Media Festival

I SPENT a while working in television and had my own production company, Eala Bhan.

We made a lot of different films, but the films that I made that I like, nobody else likes. My favourite is Ports of Call (pictured above), which I did about the Mod in Oban.

There’s a sequence in that from Handel’s Israel in Egypt, which is wonderful.

Launching the Celtic Media Festival came from my interest in films, and in Gaelic and the islands. At the time there was very little in the way of Gaelic broadcasting and hardly any connection between Scotland, Ireland, Wales and the Isle of Man, Cornwall and Brittany.

The festival was a way to help make those connections. It will celebrate its 40th year in 2019.

5. I Was Glad by Hubert Parry

I WAS a choirboy when I was young, which I enjoyed rather than endured. It was a great experience that taught me a lot about music, and the appreciation of music – it was a real education.

It also taught me all sorts of other things about confidence and appearing before an audience, some of which is still relevant to my job now.

Politics is all about performance. And that probably draws from other parts of my upbringing.

I came from a very combative background. We were always arguing over the dinner table and I was always interested in politics.

I still greatly enjoy Anglican church music. I listen to music constantly, all different types, but I Was Glad is a real favourite from that time.

6. Iona

IONA is the most special place in the world. I never but think how lucky I am to represent it.

I represent 23 islands but Iona is very different from any of them.

George MacLeod, the founder of the Iona community, described it as a “thin place” where the boundary between the physical and the spiritual was thinner than anywhere else.

It has a very special feel to it. I got to give the 1450th address in the Abbey, which was hugely exciting.

A month later we got to play host there to Michael D Higgins, the president of Ireland. Though it’s kept in Dublin, the Book of Kells was made in Iona, so there is a link there.

7. Blipfoto

I POST a picture on this online photo journal every day. I’ve always been a keen photographer and when I started I was culture minister.

It’s a Scottish company and I met the guy who started it and was very impressed, so I decided I’d try it and I realised I was learning quite a lot through it.

In 2010 I wondered if I could do a whole year, then at the end of that I decided to do a whole parliament.

Now I’m obsessed with it. The subject matter could be anything – I take shots from my kitchen window and when I go different places, but people seem to like the “behind the scenes” stuff in the parliament.

8. Keeping Going by Seamus Heaney

I NEVER expected to be back in government, doing this, and I try to keep going. The poem is about the Troubles, but that idea of keeping going is my philosophy.

I read a lot of poetry – it’s always satisfying, it always challenges you. It’s about creating the excitement and emotion with only a few words.

I’ve been reading a new collection of works by the Scottish poet Alastair Reid, who was the Chilean writer Pablo Neruda’s favourite translator.

I met him towards the end of his life when he was working for The New Yorker. He had that sharpness of vision and was very witty. I admire wit more than anything else.

9. Writing a Different Country

I REMEMBER having a conversation with a screenwriter called John Brown, who wrote Morse and Taggart and all sorts of things, and said I’d like to write a book, and when I said I couldn’t, he said that was rubbish.

I made a documentary about a photographer called Werner Kissling, who took remarkable images of life on Eriskay during the 1930s, and a publisher saw that and said it would make a good book.

I thought, “could I do this?” I got to work and did it. It wasn’t fun – it’s sometimes said “there is pleasure in writing only in having written”, and I’d agree with that, but I’ve since done it several times.

10. Joining Glasgow University

WHEN I came out of government in 2014, I didn’t expect I’d get the chance to teach at Glasgow University.

They offered me the role, and there was a view that I couldn’t manage it along with my parliamentary duties.

I couldn’t understand why, when I’d been a minister on top of other duties, I couldn’t now manage half a day, which is why I wasn’t going to be put off it.

I found it liberating. My contract is technically in suspension, and I hope to go back to it at some stage.

In earlier life I began studying theology to train to be an Episcopal priest, then ended up doing Scottish history and literature. My call was a wrong one.