Alex Salmond has admitted he feels "sad" at the way his working relationship with Nicola Sturgeon ended.
The former SNP leader today pushed back against a comment reported in an American magazine in which he was quoted as saying he could have "destroyed" Sturgeon's caree r if he had wanted to.
Salmond insisted his words were "totally taken out of context" - and said they were a reference to his appearance before a cross-party committee of MSPs in February where he was asked to call for the First Minister's resignation and refused to do so.
The profile of Sturgeon in the New Yorker threatened to reignite the war of words between the two political heavyweights just days before voters go to the polls to elect the next Scottish Parliament.
The pair's relationship was ruined after Salmond was accused in 2018 of inappropriate behaviour dating back to his time in Scotland's top job, which led to him quitting the SNP.
He denied the allegations and the Scottish Government investigation into him was later ruled to be unlawful.
The botched handing of the complaints process ended up costing the taxpayer at least £500,000 and a committee of MSPs was subsequently tasked with finding out what went wrong.
Its final report in March accused the SNP leader of misleading the committee over what was said at a 2018 meeting she had with Salmond.
But a separate inquiry overseen by a former prosecutor cleared Sturgeon of misleading the Scottish Parliament over the botched case.
In the New Yorker piece, Sturgeon said: "Outside my mum and dad, and my husband now, he has been the most influential and important person in my adult life,” she told me. “Somebody—I don’t want to use this term too loosely—but somebody that I loved, on a level.”
Asked at a media briefing today whether he "felt sad at the way things have gone between you two", Salmond replied: "I'm sure we both feel sad at the way things are.
"That's a very nice thing for Nicola to say, and fully vindicates my position that I make no personal criticism of Nicola whatsoever in the course of this campaign."
He added: "In this entire campaign I have not made a single personal attack on Nicola Sturgeon and I don't intend to start now.
"Alba have been trying to bring forward the issues in a sensible way, particularly on the issue of independence.
"The New Yorker is totally taken out of context. I did not chuckle, as was said in that phone interview of many weeks ago. I think I guffawed at the suggestion (made by the journalist)."
He continued: "My habit of guffawing at prejudicial, pejorative questions is perhaps a bad habit of mine. It's one that's incidentally one shared by Nicola, so maybe it's a bad habit she picked up from me.
"The point I was making was, far from trying to 'destroy Nicola Sturgeon'... was at the parliamentary committee, despite being invited to call for Nicola's resignation, I refused to do so."
