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Alex Salmond has launched a blistering attack on the BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson.

Saying he had waited to speak out due to the reporter’s battle with cancer, Salmond has hit out in the wake of Robinson’s appearance at the Edinburgh book festival last week.

The BBC veteran had compared protests against his coverage of the Scottish independence referendum to scenes witnessed in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

However, Salmond has slammed such comments, saying Robinson should be “ashamed” of his work with the beeb.

“I am glad that the BBC’s Nick Robinson has been restored to health,” he said.

“For some months I have said nothing at all about auld Nick because it is unfair to criticise someone who is not able to answer back.

“Now he is back.

“The BBC’s coverage of the Scottish referendum was a disgrace.

“It can be shown to be so, as was Nick’s own reporting of which he should be both embarrassed and ashamed.”

Comparisons with Putin’s Russia were described by Salmond as “ludicrous”.

“To compare, as Nick did last week, 4000 Scots peacefully protesting outside BBC Scotland as something akin to Putin’s Russia is as ludicrous as it is insulting,” Salmond continued.

“It is also heavily ironic given that the most commonly used comparison with the BBC London treatment of the Scottish referendum story was with Pravda, the propaganda news agency in the old Soviet Union.”

* Don’t miss Salmond’s full and exclusive column in which he also hits out at “blatant rigging of the power market in Scotland” in Monday’s Courier, also available as a digital edition.