Upbeat video exhibits Alex Salmond making jokes shortly earlier than sudden loss of life

Alex Salmond smiled and joked with audience members in an upbeat video before his sudden death.

The former Scottish First Minister, 69, died while attending the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy Forum in North Macedonia on Saturday. He is believed to have collapsed at a lunch from a suspected heart attack, with witnesses trying desperately to save him.

A clip has emerged of him speaking to an audience at a panel event on Friday, showing him joking about not buying lunch for anyone at the conference as Scots are tight with cash.

Speaking to an audience, Mr Salmond said: “I’m always reluctant to teach lessons to other people in other countries and can I just say to the President here that if I say anything wrong then I will not be buying lunch for lots of people, I’m Scottish after all, we don’t do these sorts of things.”

Mark Donfried, one of the conference organisers, said “time stopped” when Mr Salmond collapsed at the lunch. “All of a sudden at lunchtime he was sitting across [from me],” he said. “He collapsed, he was sitting and fell back into the arms of one of the other speakers. I immediately went to the front desk to ask for an ambulance, and by the time I came back he was on the floor and they were trying CPR. The good news is he didn’t suffer. I don’t think he felt any pain.”

Elsewhere at the panel event at the diplomacy forum on Friday Mr Salmond spoke about the Scottish Independence referendum. Mr Salmond led the country as First Minister until his resignation in 2014 when he suffered a defeat as Scots rejected breaking away from the rest of the UK. The politician praised the peaceful way in which the referendum happened, telling the conference: “There were many successful things about the process of trying to reclaim Scottish Independence. There was no violence.

“Scotland is not unique in the world but it’s unusual in that the process of self-determination in the modern era in Scotland, in the democratic era, has been achieved without a single person losing their life. In fact nobody’s had so much as a nosebleed. I think the worst excess in the entire referendum campaign of ten years ago was that somebody got an egg thrown at them, which is hardly in the great excesses of politics so that was an extraordinary success.

Flags outside the Scottish Parliament were lowered on Sunday as a mark of respect to Mr Salmond – a titan of politics north of the border. After his sudden death, a floral tribute was also left with a message that read: “Thank you, Big Eck, from Scotland.”

His family issued a statement later on Sunday via Scottish Alba, the political party Mr Salmond founded after leaving office. The family said he was a “formidable politician” who “dedicated his life to the cause he believed in – independence for Scotland”.