Alex Salmond changed his signature after the Queen told him it was terrible, he has revealed.
In an apparent breach of the convention that conversations with the Queen are off the record, the former first minister of Scotland – who was receiving an honorary doctorate from the University of Glasgow – said Her Majesty was driving him around the grounds of Balmoral when she took it upon herself to criticise his handwriting.
Salmond said: "[The Queen] turned to me and said: 'First minister, you have the worst writing of any of my ministers' and I said: 'Look, Ma'am, I'll try to do better'."
He went away and practised a more legible signature to try to impress the Queen, and believed he came up with a successful alternative.
"The Queen has the most extraordinarily beautiful signature, but my signature was an indecipherable scrawl," he said.
"I couldn't do anything like the Queen's but I could make it legible, so I wrote Alex instead of a squiggle, and it does look reasonably legible now."
Pleased, Salmond started using his new signature during his time as first minister on official documents which had to be countersigned by the Queen. But the change backfired when the signature was analysed by an expert.
"I did this [new signature] and one of the papers – I can't remember which – sent it to a handwriting expert, who decided I was schizophrenic.
"So my quote was 'That's not my signature!' which, on reflection, didn't really help matters."
In actual fact, it was the Daily Record whose analysis suggested Salmond was prone to exaggeration.
Salmond added that his new signature has been used to "great effect" during his recent book-signing tour.