James Dornan: Political Spin

What was the first record you ever bought?

The first record I ever bought was Please Please Me by The Beatles. I was nine or 10 and my mum got us a record player; we had never had one before. We all got to pick a record and that was the one I got. There was a local record shop in Battlefield just round the corner from us, I can’t remember the name of it and it’s long gone but we would get our records from there.

What record will always get you on the dance floor? 

You’d never see me on the dance floor now. But in my dancing days it was usually Motown or Stax back in the 60s, that was the kind of stuff I liked dancing to. I suppose Get Ready by The Temptations. You’re going to find there is a theme with me and that is the 1960s.

What is your karaoke song? 

I don’t sing so much now because I’ve stopped drinking, but I had two songs that I sang on the karaoke: one was The Boxer by Simon & Garfunkel, and the other was When I Saw Her Standing There by The Beatles. 

What songs do you want played at your funeral? 

Leonard Cohen, Dance Me to The End of Love is probably the only one that jumps to my mind.

What songs/music is guaranteed to make you cry? 

So, I was listening to Joni Mitchell and reading an article about her and a lot of her songs are very personal and very emotional to me. But one song that makes me cry is The Living Years by Mike & the Mechanics, it came out not long after I lost my dad.

What music would you always associate with your childhood?

Interestingly, it would be people like Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, thanks to my mum’s musical influence. The Rat Pack and Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Holiday, and people like that are people I used to listen to when I was young. And going further back, Judy Garland and all the stars of the musicals.

What record do you absolutely hate but can’t get out of your head? 

That terrible Robin Hood one by Bryan Adams, (Everything I Do) I Do it For You. That should be against the law that thing, I can’t stand it.

The MSP is a fan of his grandson's band, The Ritz

What record would you be embarrassed to owning up to having in your collection? 

Not embarrassed to own up to, but I once had a song by Napoleon XIV called They Are Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa. It was a fabulous song but the weirdest song in the world. The B-side was the A-side played backwards.

What was the last band you went to see and who with?

This would have been before Covid, but in a relatively short period of time I saw Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, Leonard Cohen, and Bob Dylan, I can’t remember in what order, which is not a bad list to pick from. I would still love to see The Stones, or The Who once, for old times’ sake. The last gig I was at was my grandson’s band, they are called The Ritz and we went to see them in King Tut’s in Glasgow a couple of years ago.