Alex Salmond made me sit on the floor to interview him

Two decades ago, pictures of him and Nicola Sturgeon embracing sparked rumors that the two were more than close colleagues, although there has never been any firm proof of this. Later, when they got their hair cut, the pair were compared to Scottish comedy couple Ian and Wee Jimmy Krankie, played by real-life married couple Ian and Janette Tough.

But after Scotland voted to stay in the UK and Sturgeon took over as SNP leader, their relationship soured. Then, with the allegations against Salmond surfacing, he turned on the man who had been his mentor: a rift that never healed; so much so that it is now reported that he has been banned from his funeral.

Lawyer-turned-politician Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh then entered the frame, with a 2015 photograph of her and Salmond in a hot air balloon sparking rumors that they were close, although again this was not supported by evidence firm

When he started doing TV shows on Russian state broadcaster RT, she was his on-screen assistant, like a Debbie McGee to his Paul Daniels. He also worked with him on his program for the Turkish channel TRT World, in which he interviewed the actress Sharon Stone in Beverly Hills this year.

In fact, Tasmina was with him in North Macedonia when he died, and arranged for the saltire to be draped over his coffin for his flight back to Scotland, a trip paid for by Scottish billionaire Sir Tom Hunter.

But Salmond remained married to Moira, whom he met in the 1970s. My heart truly goes out to her for her passing.

For me, Salmond was just a great source of stories, which I needed especially being a woman in a man’s world at Holyrood, and a young woman at that.

In 2005, she was just 26 and the only woman with an office in the lobby corridor of the new Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. I was a novelty to the gentlemen The Daily Telegraph, The Times and Glasgow Heraldbut they could see that I was ready to laugh at myself after my editor insisted that I had the comic title “The First Lady of Scottish Politics” under my name, partly because I had lived for a time in America.

And my exclusive Sex and the city chat with Nicola Sturgeon, in which the then SNP deputy leader said she admired man-eater Samantha, played by Kim Cattrall, also went down a storm with the boys in the aisle.