A FORMER pop star, a chef, a fitness trainer who advises people to get "hot and sweaty at least four times a week" and Tory defector who once said ending the UK meant higher taxes and fewer jobs are to steer the cross-party campaign for a Yes vote in the independence referendum.

The "eclectic mix" will join the advisory board of Yes Scotland, the group announced last night.

The SNP-dominated campaign revealed last week that the board's chair would be Dennis Canavan, the former Labour MP and former Independent MSP.

Now it has named his colleagues.

They include Pat Kane, the singer with 80s band Hue and Cry who is separated from SNP MSP Joan McAlpine; chef Andrew Fairlie, whose restaurant at Gleneagles is the only one in Scotland with two Michelin stars; and fitness expert and Glasgow spa owner Sarah-Jane Walls.

Also announced as new – but unsurprising – faces in the team are a number of prominent nationalists, including SNP-supporting actress Elaine C Smith, SNP donor and property developer Dan Macdonald, solicitor and SNP executive member Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, and SNP deputy leader Nicola Sturgeon.

In the 1999 Holyrood election, Ahmed-Sheikh stood as a Conservative candidate against Sturgeon in Glasgow Govan. Her election leaflets said the SNP would use Holyrood to make Scots "pay more tax than anyone else in the UK". A year later, Ahmed-Sheikh defected to the SNP.Apart from Canavan, the only non-SNP politician on the board will be former MSP Colin Fox, co-convener of the Scottish Socialist Party.

The Greens distanced themselves from the campaign as it appeared to be run exclusively by the SNP but they are due to reconsider joining it.

Better Together, the campaign for a No vote in 2014 backed by Labour, the LibDems and Tories, said the board showed Yes Scotland was essentially an SNP vehicle.

One senior SNP figure said: "I'm not too sure what some of them will actually bring to the table. Some of them seem to be candyfloss."

Blair Jenkins, the former BBC Scotland executive, who was named as chair of Yes Scotland last week, said: "This is a broad church of opinions, ideas and visions, but with one shared goal – to deliver an independent Scotland."

Yes Scotland will also run an advisory council consisting of local and regional campaigners.

Labour MSP John Park said: "After shutting the Greens and [Independent MSP] Margo MacDonald out, and stuffing the board with party donors and apparatchiks, they've become the YeSNP campaign."