My Trainspotting Memory of Kennedy

Nicola Sturgeon has paid tribute to Charles Kennedy as one of the most talented politicians of his generation.

Scotland's First Minister shared personal memories of the former MP in a speech in Brussels today.

She told an audience of the laughs they shared while watching Trainspotting at a cinema in Melbourne in the 1990s, while everyone around them struggled to get their head around the heavy Scottish dialect.

They saw the Edinburgh-set film while skiving off'' a political study trip, she said.

Ms Sturgeon said: I have some very fond personal memories of Charles. I had the privilege of spending some time with him on a political study visit that we made together to Australia in the mid-1990s.

Perhaps my fondest memory from that visit - if perhaps a slightly bizarre memory - was of the two of us skiving off one day to watch Trainspotting in a Melbourne cinema.

I think we were the only two Scots in the audience at that time, so we drew some very strange looks from other people as we were uproariously laughing at lots of jokes that nobody else in the cinema were even beginning to understand. That's a small, but very special memory that I certainly will always treasure.''

The First Minister said of the former Lib Dem leader: Charles Kennedy was one of these rare people in politics. He was an incredibly talented, gifted, effective politician - I think one of the most talented politicians of his generation. And yet somehow he also managed to be universally liked across the political spectrum and indeed across wider society. That is no mean feat.

Charles will be remembered for many things. He made an outstanding and extraordinary contribution to, not just Scottish, but UK politics over a 30-year period.

But I think he will be chiefly remembered for his principled opposition to the war in Iraq in 2003 and many of the concerns and criticisms he made then were, of course, subsequently found to be very well founded. And he also then - and perhaps partly because of that - went on to lead his party to its best ever election result in the 2005 general election.''

Ms Sturgeon, who used her first Brussels speech to reiterate her Government's support for the UK remaining in the EU, said Mr Kennedy would have been a powerful voice'' in the upcoming EU referendum.

She said: Charles Kennedy was a proud and passionate advocate of Europe and the UK's membership of the European Union.

His would have been an incredibly powerful voice in the upcoming EU referendum, so for that reason but also for many, many other reasons, I think our country today is much poorer for the passing of Charles Kennedy.

I am sure I am not the only one here today who wants to send thoughts and condolences to Charles's family, his friends and to his party colleagues.''