He’s the man credited with securing the Scottish Parliament’s first ever overall majority, but Alex Salmond is also a husband, terrible golfer, lamb lover and self-confessed fan of horse-racing.
Appearing on STV’s The Hour, he admitted that his last win on the horses came yesterday and claimed that if he wasn’t First Minister of Scotland he’d have liked to work as a Bookie’s runner or as a guest presenter on The Hour.
Yet somehow this seems unlikely. An outspoken politician who has spent 20 years championing Scottish independence, the chances of a referendum on the subject are now more likely than ever but for Alex Salmond Scotland still faces a few stumbling blocks.
Launching the SNP’s five-year-plan today, the topics at the top of the agenda were bigotry and booze, not independence. Speaking to The Hour, he explained why:
“I think about 99 per cent of football fans like myself and 99.9 per cent of the rest of the country are tired of shows of sectarianism at football grounds or attaching themselves to football.
“So we’re going to legislate to make it an indictable offence. That means that it’s five years you could get it if you do that.
“Secondly, the booze culture in Scotland: that’s going to be a difficult problem to deal with but it’s something we must do. It’s blighting lots of lives, its causing mayhem in our city centres… and there’s a whole generation of young folk getting lost to booze that’s cheaper than water.”
While championing these causes takes up most of his time, away from public life he works hard keep personal life private. His wife Moira has a low public profile and he admitted to The Hour that this is deliberate:
“There’s been no tradition in Scotland of politicians fronting up their families and that goes right back to John Smith [and] Donald Dewar. So that’s never been our way and that’s the right way.
“There’s nothing worse than being a politician’s spouse. You get none of the glory and you get all of the grief.”
Yet glory and grief aside, his political career won’t be what’s stopping him from presenting The Hour. His wife Moira is a die-hard Stephen Jardine fan and having Alex present the show would mean she could never watch it again.
