THE WINE, THE WOMEN AND THE WIFE OF 40 YEARS
A penchant for pink Champagne. Friendships with female politicians. A kiss on the lips for a journalist. And yet Alex Salmond is an endearingly devoted husband. Seldom has such a public figure been such an enigma
IT was the third time the journalist had met Alex Salmond – well enough acquainted, in his book at least, 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 and soda, fruitcake and profiteroles.
Making himself at home in the chandeliered café, he kicked off his shoes and engaged the waitress, whom he knew by name, in a lengthy 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 political career of the totemic figure of Scottish nationalism has any allegation of infidelity to his now 81-year-old wife Moira ever appeared in print.
But that Alex Salmond 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 a shirt-sleeved Mr Salmond was photographed on the campaign trail in Stirling giving a 17-year-old student a lick of his Solero ice lolly.
‘I remember that Mrs Salmond wasn’t pleased,’ shuddered Mr Salmond years later. ‘I tried to hide those newspapers.’ And how much fun was had on Twitter in 2015 when Mr Salmond was pictured with the SNP’s Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh taking a ride together in a hot air balloon.
Now Mr Salmond faces allegations which, if proved to be true, could end any future political aspirations.
He is accused of sexual misconduct towards two members of staff during his time as First Minister in his then-official residence, Bute House – claims he describes as ‘patently ridiculous’.
What is undeniable is women have been a predominant factor in Mr Salmond’s life. It was a political argument with a girlfriend at St Andrews University which prompted him to join the SNP.
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 UK.
After that failure, a new working relationship developed with 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 him 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 63year-old husband home in Strichen more of the time? The days when either 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.’
The pair met in the late 1970s when Mr Salmond was working as an assistant economist in the Scottish Office.
Moira French McGlashan, already past 40, was his boss, yet somehow they clicked and they 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’ – a reaction which has never entirely disappeared. ‘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 too.
Few doubt, however, it was the work of Moira – as sounding board, hostess, wardrobe consultant and more – that helped mould Mr Salmond into an electable MP. She even taught him how to drive.
But it was clear from the very beginning she preferred to be in the background. Only once, in 1990, did the couple agree to a joint interview and the clear impression is both regretted it.
‘He hasn’t a clue about the colours of ties, shirts or socks,’ Mrs Salmond told the newspaper. ‘He just puts on the nearest thing to hand. ‘She added: ‘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?
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 entire political landscape, emerged.
MR Salmond, who had resigned as leader in 2000, admitted he would never have entered the leadership race four years later if his wife had said no.
‘Luckily for me, and possibly the party’, she said yes. Put another way, if Moira had said no and Mr Salmond had not led his party to victory at the Scottish parliament, it is unlikely there would have been an independence referendum.
Perhaps his wife realised, as political friends and foes alike do, that Mr Salmond simply cannot bear not to be where the action is. And much as he plays the dutiful and attentive husband at home in their converted mill house, he is no less at home in a Palace of Westminster café with a glass in his hand turning on the charm.
‘It’s like he’s welcoming me to his other home,’ wrote Vicky Allan of the day she met Mr Salmond in the Commons Central Lobby. Another female journalist who interviewed him in the early 2000s said: ‘We shared a bottle of wine which now seems unusual for an interview.
‘He must have been pleased with the piece I wrote because he did later joke to a colleague of mine that all his successes with women were down to wine.’
Not that it is 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 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.
One female journalist recalls the time she arrived for an interview with the then First Minister and he wordlessly handed her a flower. When she said to him a few minutes later ‘How are you feeling?’ he refused to respond. Nor is Mr Salmond’s chuckling charm the trait which greets everyone who interviews him.
A television journalist recalls the time he moved in with his microphone after Mr Salmond had announced his candidacy for his party’s 2004 leadership contest. Before speaking to the reporter Mr Salmond reached into his mouth, removed his chewing gum and, without looking at him or saying a word, deposited it in the hand of the astonished cameraman.
The indignities suffered by those working for Mr Salmond were surely worse. It is said one activist was asked brusquely to enter a lavatory the First Minister had just used and do the flushing for him.
Later, Mr Salmond became a compulsive hand washer and had an aide carry sanitising wipes.
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 highly toxic relationship with Roseanna Cunningham who seemed destined to lead the party in 2004 before Mr Salmond spiked her guns by throwing his lot in with her opponent Nicola Sturgeon and romping to victory. The pair barely spoke to each other for years.
But outside of his marriage and family, few women surely are more pivotal in his story than his successor Nicola Sturgeon.
Once his protégée, the First Minister of Scotland now looks askance at the chaos her former mentor still wreaks while not even in elected politics: an Edinburgh Festival Fringe show with invited guests including, of all people, Tory politician David Davis; a TV show on a channel backed by the Kremlin at a time the Russian regime is accused of murdering dissenting journalists – and now, claims of sexual misconduct in Bute House.
But her colleagues will not have forgotten the days when Mr Salmond ruled with an iron fist and she – alone – escaped censure.
‘Nicola has clearly been mentored,’ said one insider at the time. ‘There’s a teacher’s pet element with her and Alex.’ Praising Mr Salmond to the skies as his deputy, Miss Sturgeon once boasted at a party conference: ‘No one knows him better than I do, with the possible exception of Moira.’
One colleague suggested no one succeeded better than Miss Sturgeon at dealing with Mr Salmond’s tetchy moods. ‘Alex can be very hard on people,’ he said. ‘Putting them down if they don’t rise to the challenge. Nicola is one of the few people who can tease Alex and get away with it.’
For the rest of his staff, the tongue-lashings could be deeply unpleasant. One former aide described criticism from Mr Salmond as ‘crushing, a soul-destroying emotional train wreck’. Another described him as a relentless task-master and concluded it was impossible to work for him and be in a relationship at the same time. Phone calls could come at any time of day and from anywhere – even from the Salmond bathtub.
All of which presents the out-of-work politician accused of sexual misconduct as an enigma. Is he, at root, 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 (if such a thing were possible) think not.
THE real Alex Salmond, says one who has known him for decades, is a complete political anorak – a man without children, many meaningful friendships or even much in the way of hobbies beyond the odd flutter on the horses.
Until last year, Mr Salmond had never lost a constituency election and few who watched him in action ever doubted why: he was passionate about winning. His party colleague Mike Russell once described the experience of walking down the street with Mr Salmond. It was, he said, like watching a ‘crusade to personally convert every Scottish voter’.
Little wonder, when defeat came, that Mr Salmond did not take it lying down. No gentle retirement to Aberdeenshire and Moira.
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 North-east fiefdom fell to the Tories.
How humiliating for this deeply proud man that this predicament should be the latest we see of him.