Heather Suttie: 'It’s Glasgow; it’s a bit edgy and a bit real'

Ms Suttie deserves to be there too. In 2007, she was a pioneer in the campaign to eliminate the use of plastic in our everyday lives. Others would later step up and feed on the social kudos that came attached, but Ms Suttie was shouting about this and nudging our consciences long before the issue was commandeered by green corporate hustlers.

“That all started because of my beautiful dog, Charlee, a Weimaraner,” she says. “I used to take her for an early morning walk when I was doing breakfast radio and needed to be up early.

“I took her everywhere locally and often to the beach and I began to notice the huge numbers of plastic bags everywhere we went. And so, I began to take pictures and posting them on Facebook. It was appalling: bags, bottles, straws, the lot and then I started researching it.

“So I bought a domain name saynotoplastic.co.uk and built a very basic website and started a petition. I wanted to encourage people to say ‘no’ to a plastic bag, even if only once a day. It was almost like saying to people to switch off their lamps or wear a seatbelt. This is no different.”

Within a few weeks, 10,000 people had signed the petition and the media picked up on it. She was on the Jeremy Vine show arguing with Stuart Rose, then the CEO of Marks & Spencer who were just about to introduce the 5p plastic bag charge for food items. “Yeah, it's good,” I told him, “but it's nowhere near enough.”

She’s no longer in the frontline of this, as like all other grassroots movements for social good it’s become a chi-chi cause for civic authorities and celebrities seeking to boost their social credentials.

“Kevin, I started that campaign in 2007. The plastic bag charge wasn't introduced until 2014. Progress is really, really slow. And it's all very well, having initiatives like a ban on disposable vapes, but what about everything else in terms of environmental damage?

“We need causes and activities that ordinary people can get engaged with. Governments want the big-ticket statements like being carbon-neutral by 2030, but what does that even mean?

“It's really frustrating because I don't think people fully understand that we have the power to make the difference by how we spend our money and the decisions that we make. The supermarkets should be doing more; the food producers should be doing more. When you go to a supermarket there are still plastic bags everywhere.”

The desire to make a positive difference still burns within her and is still seeking outlets. Three years ago, as Covid first started to move among us, she began to think about how her lifelong love of books might reach people feeling isolated and trapped by the pandemic.

“I was reading a lot of books but I was missing that interaction. So I set up the Facebook group and one of my friends suggested I call it Bookface.”

Within about 24 hours she had 100 people joining and when she woke up the next day it had grown to around 300. There are now 3,205 dedicated members from 50 countries. And, each month since, from when the world emerged from lockdown, an in-person event has been held in Glasgow, featuring authors chatting about their books to an audience of around 150. Every one has been sold out, with people travelling from the rest of the UK and across Europe to be there.

Some of the UK’s most successful and well-known authors are happy to travel long distances, often at their own cost, to appear. These events are an antidote to those traditional, boutique book festivals where it seems a desire to be seen and to display your own literary pretensions is as important as listening to the author.

Susannah Constantine, the best-selling author and former style guru, attended last year and declared that this was “a f**king movement”. Her audience were united not by literary pretension, but merely by an unselfconscious, everyday love of books.

I tell Ms Suttie about a recent visit to the Edinburgh Book Festival and how several audience members embarked on long soliloquies about their interpretation of a work as the author looked on in bemusement. “I’ve never been to the Edinburgh book festival,” she says. This pleases me more than I can say.

“I wanted to ensure that this would be a positive and uplifting space because there was so much negativity and s*** going on everywhere else. We would post a book that we really enjoyed, and we'd talk about why we enjoyed it and then organically it just kind of just caught fire. People loved it because it's not like those sites where you go to critique the character or the plot. That's not what this is about.

“This is purely about books that you’d give to a friend. People can turn up with four books and swap them. They have tea, coffee, a glass of fizz (because it’s Glasgow); chat for half an hour then I introduce the author and guest host.

“We have questions from the floor, some brunch and then people can buy a signed copy of the author's book. It’s a really simple idea.”

Two years and 40 sold-out events later it's still gaining momentum. Nor does she make any money from it. “I'm good with ideas,” she says, “but I'm s*** at making money.” Yet, it seems tailor-made for a sponsor: it’s Glasgow; it’s a bit edgy and a bit real and a bit no-messing about. No-one’s judged and the authors love it for all those reasons.

Sophie Gravia, the young Scottish writer whose Glasgow Kiss trilogy has become a worldwide literary phenomenon, was a guest author just as they were about to annexe the bestseller lists. She said: “I’ve been guest author at a couple of the Bookface events run by Heather, and they were wonderful experiences. Heather has created a fun, creative community which is fresh for the likes of Glasgow. I’d encourage everyone to pop along and have a great afternoon.”

Ms Suttie is also passionate about children’s and adult literacy and how the Bookface model could be rolled out across the country, especially in those areas where children may have fewer opportunities to develop a love of books.

“I'd love to expand it to events exclusively for children because there are still too many who don't have access to books and for many different reasons.” When she talks about this her passion is palpable and you begin to realise that children who lack access to books is akin to them being denied a basic human right.

“There are so many different people from different backgrounds; different ages; different cultures; different countries. There's just such a vast array of different types of people, many of whom have never previously attended an in-person book event.

“It's opened up friendships and relationships through a love of reading. And it’s positively encouraged people to visit their local library. And when they come to the event (and we saw this after the pandemic) it helped to re-build their confidence and their ability to engage socially again. It's fluid and it's free. It's not stuffy.

“I would love to be able to bring more people together to be able to experience what books can bring. Whether that's for elderly people or young children. I’d love to take it on the road. I'd love to do one in London. I'd love to do one in New York. There are endless possibilities but this would take investment perhaps, from a social entrepreneur or a local authority who are serious about reaching out to children and enabling them to develop a love of reading.”

I suggest that she herself should feature at the top of the bill to tell her story, but she’s having none of it. “I prefer enabling others to tell their stories,” she says. She does that well; making things happen and always with a shimmy and a West of Scotland edge. Keeping everything real.