Alex Salmond told a court that numerous charges of sexual and indecent assault, and a charge of attempted rape against him were deliberate fabrications or exaggerated.

The former first minister of Scotland, who denies the charges against him, told the high court in Edinburgh the 13 charges he faces of attempted rape, sexual assaults and indecent assaults on nine women were false or based on misinterpretation.

Originally indicted on 14 charges, he was formally acquitted of one sexual assault after the charge was dropped by the prosecution on Monday.

Speaking for the first time in his defence, Salmond told his lawyer, Gordon Jackson QC, with hindsight he wished he had been “more careful with people’s personal space”, but added that many incidents were “being reinterpreted and exaggerated out of any possible proportion”.

Asked by Jackson why some charges were exaggerations, the former Scottish National party leader said: “Some, not all, are fabrications. They’re deliberate fabrications for political purposes.

“Some are exaggerations that are taken out of proportion and I think that the impact of some of the publicity of the last 18 months might have led some people quite innocently to revise their opinions and say: ‘Oh well something happened to me’ and it gets presented in a totally different way.”

Salmond is accused of sexual assault with intent to rape against one complainer, the Scottish legal term for complainant, known as F, who cannot be named for legal reasons. Salmond told the jury the incident at Bute House, the first minister’s official residence in Edinburgh, was based on “a legitimate grievance even if it isn’t what happened”.

Salmond denied F’s allegations that in December 2013 in one of Bute House’s bedrooms he had ordered the complainer to lie on the bed, sexually assaulted her by touching her across her body over her clothing, pulling up her dress and kissing her repeatedly after getting drunk on a potent Chinese spirit.

Salmond admitted he and F drank the spirit, known as Maotai, but claimed they shared the bottle during a long work session on government papers. One box of papers involved documents from a recent visit to China and Hong Kong and he told the court: “I thought it would be appropriate to toast the correspondence with Maotai.”

He claimed they became tipsy, and as F prepared to leave he kissed her on the cheek before they fell on to the bed in a “sleepy cuddle”, fully dressed, “for no more than a few seconds”. They both immediately realised they had made a mistake, he added, and he said she later accepted his apology after she reported the encounter to a senior civil servant.

“I have never attempted to have non-consensual sexual relations with anyone in my entire life,” Salmond said.

He also made a counter-allegation against complainer H, a former Scottish government official, who has accused him of attempting to rape her during a violent encounter at Bute House in June 2014 and of a sexual assault in the same building the previous month.

H alleged Salmond had insisted they drank Maotai together. The former first minister told the court H had made both incidents up. He told the court they had had “a consensual sexual liaison” which took place in August 2013, which H had initiated.

They had kissed and caressed each other, he said, but without undressing. “We both realised it wasn’t a good idea and we parted good friends, with no damage done,” he told the court.

He said allegations by one senior Scottish government official, known as complainer A, that in 2008 he had touched her buttocks and the side of her breasts, as well as kissing her on the mouth, are “a fabrication from start to finish”.

A’s allegation he had assaulted her while they danced in a nightclub in 2010 was “ludicrous”, he said. He would never have assaulted her but this was also a very public venue, and they did not dance together. “It’s a fabrication, just as she has encouraged at least five other people to exaggerate or make claims against me,” he told the court.

He was asked five times by the prosecutor, Alex Prentice QC, whether he considered the feelings of another civil servant, B, who accused him of trying to force her to reenact a Jack Vettriano painting of two people kissing by pulling her towards him.

Salmond replied: “I assumed she would find the circumstances as funny [as] I did.” He had earlier told Jackson: “It was a joke, high jinks, it was a bit of fun,” he said. B had “misremembered” the event, he added.

Salmond told jurors there was frequently “blurring of the normal professional-social boundaries” between him and staff in his private office, because they worked together round the clock, in a high pressure working environment.

During his cross-examination, Prentice repeatedly asked Salmond, now 65, whether he had considered the large age gap between himself and the female officials he has been accused of assaulting, who were in their 20s and 30s at the time.

Salmond said the age gap was irrelevant as any familiar conduct was “non-sexual”. Salmond insisted he respected women and repeatedly denied the prosecutor’s assertions that the allegations against him were correct.

He admitted stroking the face of complainer D, a civil servant, several times as she slept beside him in a car during a visit to Hong Kong; he did so because he was trying to gently wake her up. He said he pulled D’s curly hair several times too, as a friendly gesture, and had tapped another complainer, J, a former Scottish National party employee, on the nose.

The hearing continues.