First Minister’s Desert Island Discs

Alex Salmond, Scotland’s First Minister, has just been on Desert Island Discs with Kirsty Young.

His early affiliation to Scottish independence was revealed as being born of a rebuff from an English girlfriend.

He was also discovered to have been a singer, a good boy soprano with a four octave range and a singing coach whose own fondness for Burns has been a lifelong influence upon him.

It has always been obvious that music has played a large part in his life. A few years ago, the SNP issued a fundraising CD on which Salmond sang a duet – The Rowan Tree – with Anne Lorne Gillies. They were captured by the camera in the recording studio and then emerging from it – and Salmond’s face demonstrated the transcendence of the experience.

His father was a staunch Labour supporter, nicknamed ‘Joe’ in the navy (after Stalin). In contrast, his mother was a ‘Churchill conservative’ and Salmond’s own first job was in the brickworks in Linlithgow – a personal initiative his mother found a way of short circuiting..

Boy and man, Salmond was very close to his mother, who died seven years ago and clearly sees her as an inspirational figure who took to Munro-bagging late in life and died in the hills. His greatest regret was rushing off to canvass and finding that his mother had died while he was away.

Challenged about his possession of an incandescent temper – he demurred, said he’d never thrown a phone at the wall and that most people who’d ever worked with him had stayed working with him.

He named Nicola Sturgeon, John Swinney and Michael Russell as SNP names now as recognisable as his own.

The Salmonds’ 30th wedding anniversary is later this year and he said of his wife Moira that political spouses have the hardest of all jobs, describing her support for him as filled with grace, patience and helpfulness and saying that she is now much more radical than he is.

His record choices were predictably Scottish in emphasis but included references to his own musical career (as a boy soprano he sang in a production of Amahl in the Night Visitors); and tributes, as with playing Baker Street by Gerry Rafferty who died a few days ago.

It’s worth noting that the type of ‘Scottishness’ of tracks he chose was cultural rather than militant, with Dougie Maclean’s Caledonia a weakly sentimental finale.

Unlike some guests on this programme, his choices were organic and had nothing of the poseur about them – and they were all attractive pieces to listen to. The Robeson choice was a fabulous track and not one of the most known.

• Ae Fond Kiss – Anne Lorne Gillies (tribute to Burns)
• Don’t Cry Mother Dear from Amalh and the Night Visitors – an operatic piece by Gian Carlo Menotti (he had sung in this himself)
• Baker Street by Gerry Rafferty (tribute ti the musician who recently died)
• 500  Miles by the Proclaimers (whose first record was produced by Gerry Rafferty)
• Joe Hill by Paul Robeson (His favourite track of all for its political galvanism. Robeson was also his hero as a boy soprano but one his own voice could not emulate)
• Coisich A Ruin by Karen Matheson of Capercaillie (described as ‘a voice to dream about’ in the first Gaelic song to make the charts.)
• San Quentin by Johnny Cash (the San Quentin live show)
• Caledonia by Dougie MacLean

The First Minister’s choice of a book was the complete works of Robert Burns and his luxury was a sand wedge, a golf club to improve his game in getting out of bunkers. No mention of a curry.

Our bet is that from now to the Scottish Election on 5th May, political commentators will be describing every smart move the First Minister makes as ‘playing the sand wedge’.