Just back from saving the world, Salmond is the Tartan Kissinger

ALEX Salmond plopped into his seat with a tired but happy sigh. “I caught an early morning flight from Berlin,” he modestly told the Scottish Affairs Committee. “I left Ban Ki-moon, Bob Geldof and Sharon Stone to be with you.”

And what, pray, could bring Ban, Bob and Sharon together on the Unter den Linden? (My diary says the Berlin Bondage Festival isn’t till May). “An international peace conference,” he explained, thus extending hope to any Palestinians watching online. Hold tight, boys! Scotland’s former first minister and the bird from Basic Instinct are working on a peace plan.

Alex hasn’t changed – he’s still crumpled, cuddly and sinister, as if Steiff made a Robert Maxwell teddy bear. The subject of discussion was the historic relationship between London and devolved Scotland, of which he said there were “three phases”: bad relations, good relations, bad again – the “golden age” happening to coincide with when he was in charge. Because Alex wanted to prove Scotland could go it alone, and Westminster wanted to prove it didn’t have to, both sides made devolution work. By that logic, he said with a twinkle, “We should have more referenda, then we can have a golden age” all the time.

But “did you ever make a mistake?” asked Douglas Ross.

Salmond merely expressed regret that he’d lost the independence vote.

Well, what about the collapse in Scottish education, continued Ross, or drug deaths or the undelivered ferries...?

But the ferry contracts were negotiated after I left office, corrected Alex, delighted that he’d caught the

Tory – who works both as an MP and an MSP – out in an error.

Salmond has compensated for his loss of a role in Scotland by going global, enjoying a second life as the Tartan Kissinger. Anum Qaisar (not in Salmond’s party but a fellow nationalist) threw him some friendly questions about Israel.

Chairman Pete Wishart asked what this has to do with devolution.

The answer, I suspect, is that it’s a wedge issue with which to attack both Tories and Labour, suggesting that a Scotland freed from the UK could achieve its centuries-old dream of being twinned with Gaza.

To prove his own indispensability to world affairs, Alex revealed that at the height of a Uk/china diplomatic crisis in 2013, he helped defuse tensions via a personal meeting with officials in Beijing – prompting two of the committee members to laugh and one to cross her arms in a non-verbal “pull the other one”.

The only politician he didn’t boast about knowing during two-and-a-half hours of rampant showing off was Nicola Sturgeon. In fact, I don’t think he used her name once. Yet the woman who famously threw him under the bus travels with him all the time, as the ghost at every summit.

What’s your advice to the incoming Labour government, asked Wishart? “Don’t rely on old chums,” replied Salmond, thinking of no one in particular. “Your enemies sometimes sit alongside you.”