'Child labour' for Willie Rennie and John Swinney

Finance Secretary John Swinney and Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie got their first job as children, Holyrood can reveal, while the Conservative Finance spokesman Gavin Brown started his career in a nightclub.

As part of our question and answer session on the economy with the party finance spokespeople, one of our more light-hearted questions was what their first ever job was, and if they could remember what they bought with their first pay packet.

Willie Rennie started by turning vegetables into chocolate bars. "As a boy I worked in my dad’s shop stacking shelves and packing potatoes in bags. I bought a Yorkie chocolate bar," he said.

Marathon runner John Swinney was active from a young age. "My first job was a paper round in Corstorphine, and I used the first pay packet to go youth hostelling around Scotland by bike," he told us. 

Patrick Harvie of the Scottish Greens, said he drank his earnings. "I did some data entry work while I was a student, as well as occasional bits of sessional work at the students’ union. Either way, the money probably ended up being handed over across the union bar," he said.

Gavin Brown said: "My first job was working behind the bar at a nightclub on Lothian Road, called Century 2000. I am struggling to remember what I spent the money on...", perhaps because he drank it too?

Pick up your copy of Holyrood magazine on Monday to read answers to other questions, including what lessons have been learned from the banking crisis, from John Swinney, Jackie Baillie, Willie Rennie, Gavin Brown and Patrick Harvie