With independence referendum debates raging across Courier country, Graeme Ogston headed to Dundee’s Caird Hall for a BBC 5 Live debate featuring Yes and No supporters, along with a healthy smattering of undecided voters.
It was Dundee’s first-time voters whose presence was most keenly felt during BBC 5 Live’s Caird Hall independence debate on Tuesday.
Remarking that the Clash once sang Should I Stay or Should I Go when they graced the Caird Hall stage in the 1980s (which they hadn’t), host Victoria Derbyshire otherwise expertly presided over 90 minutes of lively, but remarkably good-natured debate.
This was probably no surprise, given that the BBC were weeding out potential rabble-rousers in advance.
Arab Trust board member Mike Barile had his invite cancelled the night before as programme bosses “didn’t want to risk” a repeat of his heckling of Gordon Brown in the adjoining Marryat Hall last week.
That’s not to say it was a damp squib far from it.
Pantomime boos rang out when a supposedly undecided voter admitted he had already voted Yes in the postal ballot.
Jo Swinson’s declaration that oil revenue was better controlled from Westminster was met with hoots of derision.
Harris Academy pupil Kirsten Friedman’s grilling of Dennis Canavan on tuition fees got one of the biggest cheers of the morning.
There was also no shortage of dramatic some might say doom-laden proclamations.
Jenny Marra said people at Dundee University had told her independence would be “the mother of all disasters”.
Dr Alistair McCracken, a GP of 36 years, said: “If you want to go home from hospital in a Tesco van in five years’ time, you will vote No.”
But in among the usual jibes and accusations from both sides, a clear voice rang through from first-time voters, genuinely enthused and engaged in the political process like never before.
Abertay University Student Association president Robyn Donoghue perhaps summed it up best: “This debate has demonstrated it is young people’s future and they want to be part of it.”