A career peppered by innuendo and rumour about wine and women
THE third time the journalist met Alex Salmond, they were well enough acquainted, in his book, for a kiss full on the lips. After planting the smacker on writer Vicky Allan, he decided they should do their interview in the Palace of Westminster’s Pugin Room over brandies, fruitcake and profiteroles.
Making himself at home in the chandeliered cafe, he kicked his shoes off under the table and engaged the waitress, who he knew by name, in a dialogue in which he seemed to hang on her every word.
Then, turning back to his interviewer, he sweetly reminded her of the time and the place where they last met.
Not once in the long career of the totemic figure of Scottish nationalism has any allegation of infidelity ever appeared in print.
But that Mr Salmond, 63, comes to life in the company of women – preferably with a glass in his hand – no one, not even he, could deny. How the Press and political rivals tittered when, in 1999, he was photographed on the campaign trail in Stirling giving a 17-year-old student a lick of his Solero ice lolly as he draped his jacket over his shoulder.
‘I remember that Mrs Salmond wasn’t pleased,’ he shuddered years later. ‘I tried to hide those newspapers.’
And how much fun was had on Twitter in 2015 when he was pictured with the SNP’s Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh taking a ride in a hot air balloon – as Mrs Salmond remained firmly in the background at the couple’s Aberdeenshire home.
Now Mr Salmond faces allegations more serious than the innuendo, rumour and speculation about women and wine which has peppered much of his political career.
He is accused of sexual misconduct towards two members of staff during his time as first minister, in his then-official residence, Bute House in Edinburgh – claims which he describes as ‘patently ridiculous’.
What is undeniable is women have been a prominent fixture in Mr Salmond’s life. It was a political argument with a girlfriend at St Andrews which prompted him to join the SNP in the first place.
It was a partnership with one – his wife – which helped make him electable. And a close working relationship with another – Nicola Sturgeon – nearly resulted in the dismantling of the United Kingdom.
After that failure, a working relationship developed with married Mrs Ahmed-Sheikh as both won seats at Westminster in 2015. At Mr Salmond’s behest, Mrs Ahmed-Sheikh travelled to the Bahamas to meet Sir Sean Connery and help record a plug for the Alex Salmond autobiography, The Dream Shall Never Die.
BUT what of Mrs Salmond? At 81, is she not anxious to have her husband home in Strichen, Aberdeenshire, more often?
The days when either one would speak openly about their marriage are long in the past, but what is clear is he is fiercely protective of her and, in his own way, utterly devoted. ‘I am public property,’ Mr Salmond used to say when asked about her. ‘She is not.’ They met in the late 1970s when West Lothian-born Mr Salmond was working in the Scottish Office. Moira French McGlashan, already past 40, was his boss, yet somehow they clicked and were married within three years.
According to Mr Salmond’s biographer David Torrance: ‘Everyone who knew either Alex or Moira at this time recalls them being a perfect match, while their 17-year age gap was barely perceptible. Yet political contemporaries regarded the Salmond marriage with ‘bemusement’.
‘It was so out of character, so out of style with Alex,’ said Mr Torrance. ‘This young radical working- class person marrying someone not only 17 years older than him but, by her own admission, of a more Conservativeleaning background and so much more proper than he was.’
By choosing to marry a woman of 43, Mr Salmond appeared to have turned his back on the prospect of fatherhood – and so it proved. Some in his party believed that children would have made him a more rounded, patient man, but perhaps a less effective leader.
Few doubt, however, it was the behind-the-scenes work of Moira – as a sounding board, hostess, wardrobe consultant and more – that helped mould Mr Salmond into an electable MP.
But it was clear from the beginning she preferred to be in the background. Only once, in 1990, did the couple agree to a joint interview and the immediate impression was both regretted it.
‘He hasn’t a clue about the colours of ties, shirts or socks,’ Mrs Salmond said. ‘Sometimes I switch on the six o’clock news and I’m horrified by what he is wearing.’ And when oh when, she went on, was he ever going to put up that new pole for her curtains?
It was her first and last interview. But later in Mr Salmond’s career, as the SNP became a more powerful force, a clear picture of Mrs Salmond’s power over her husband and, by extension, the political landscape emerged. Mr Salmond, who had resigned from his first term as SNP leader in 2000, said he would never have entered the party leadership race four years later if his wife had said no. Perhaps she realised, as his friends and foes alike do, that Mr Salmond cannot bear not to be where the action is.
Much as he plays the dutiful husband in his converted mill house in Aberdeenshire, he is no less at home in a Westminster cafe with a glass in his hand turning on the charm.
And it is not only in the company of women that the alcohol flows. Weeks before the May 2015 General Election, he was demanding flutes of pink champagne during interviews with the Spectator and New Statesman magazines. Red wine, meanwhile, was his preferred tipple before an interview with Sky News’s Adam Boulton in 2014.
According to a Scottish journalist who has socialised with him: ‘He certainly likes his wine. He’s not a massive boozer, but certainly knocks them back when he does drink.
‘On the rare occasion I’ve had a drink with him, he literally pours it down his throat. And it’s always wine or champers, never anything as common as beer.’
FOR all the alcohol-fuelled bonhomie and occasionally grating attempts at charm, Mr Salmond is rarely comfortable discussing his emotions or private life.
And if gossiped-about friendships with flavour-of-the-month SNP women have raised eyebrows in the past, there have been bitter enmities too.
Chief among them was his toxic relationship with Roseanna Cunningham, who seemed destined to lead her party in 2004 before Mr Salmond spiked her guns by throwing his lot in with her opponent, Miss Sturgeon, who romped to victory. The pair barely spoke to each other for years.
In all, the out- of-work politician, accused of two counts of sexual misconduct, is something of an enigma.
Is he an incorrigible ladies’ man, the SNP’s resident roué, now more often than not soaked in fine wine and chandelier light?
Those who know him well think not. The real Alex Salmond, says one who has known him for decades, is a political anorak – a man without many meaningful friendships and few hobbies beyond the odd flutter on the horses.
Little wonder, when defeat came last year, that Mr Salmond did not take it lying down. No gentle retirement to Aberdeenshire and Moira for him.
Instead, a defiant speech and a typically Salmond- esque quote from a Walter Scott poem. ‘ So laugh, false Whigs, in the midst of your glee, you have not seen the last of my bonnets and me,’ he promised as his fiefdom in northeast Scotland fell to the Tories.
How humiliating for this deeply proud man to find himself in his current predicament.