IT'S all highly illogical but has boldly gone where no Scottish political story has gone before.
Days after it emerged Alex Salmond found himself in an odd stand-off with airline staff after booking on to a flight under the name James Kirk, the captain of Star Trek's USS Enterprise, the former First Minister has had an even more bizarre Twitter exchange with the man himself, William Shatner.
Clearly seeing the humourous side of his starring role in a political story thousands of miles across the Atlantic, Shatner tweeted the Gordon MP in the early hours of Tuesday, stating: "There are easier ways to ask for an autograph!"
Mr Salmond, a self-confessed proud “Trekkie”, was later able to display his own photo-editing skills, responding to the 84-year-old TV icon with an image of himself in Kirk's classic Star Trek garb and Shatner sat First Minister Questions at Holyrood.
Underneath he wrote: "But who is who? ;-) #SetPhasersToFun."
At the weekend it emerged that Mr Salmond has caused confusion when British Airways initially refused to let him board a flight at Heathrow under the sci-fi alias.
It was reported that it took a series of phone calls for the senior politician to persuade the airline that he should be allowed on board.
The former SNP leader said he often travelled under a false name for security reasons and he liked to use Captain Kirk's name as he is an avid Star Trek fan.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel