Liberal Democrat leaders are not, as a rule, associated with marauding. Sex scandals, yes — Jeremy Thorpe, Paddy Ashdown and contender Mark Oaten have given British politics some memorable moments of high drama and low farce. Old-fashioned, red-blooded pillage is not what you expect, so it is interesting that the only thing for which Tavish Scott, the newly elected leader of the Scottish Lib Dems, is renowned is bringing a troupe of “Vikings” from his native Shetland to the opening of Parliament last year.

“They came in full Viking regalia,” he says, “gave three cheers for the Queen as they walked past the box, which you’re not meant to do, found a buffet, scoffed the lot and drank the bar dry.”

The so-called Jarl Squad presented the presiding officer with a Jarl Squad tie, and he’s clearly proud of them. Have the Liberal Democrats finally found somebody with a bit of spunk? Scott’s nicknames include “the Shetland heart-throb” or the “Lerwick Lothario” and, at 42, he’s on his second marriage — to glamorous BBC journalist Kirsten Campbell. His hair is strawberry blond, not ginger; his physique trim not weedy and he has the energy to inject the rigour and vigour so conspicuously absent from Scottish politics.

His misfortune is not merely to be trapped in a party that has undergone a charisma bypass but to have inherited the leadership at a time when the Lib Dems have rarely looked less relevant. After two spells in coalition with Labour, they came fourth in the last Holyrood election, and have only 16 MSPs. At the Glasgow East by-election, they performed so badly, they lost their deposit. Now that Alex Salmond has demonstrated the feasibility of minority government in Scotland, the former kingmakers could face years in the political wilderness.

Scott is credited with killing a deal Nicol Stephen was considering making with Alex Salmond, and the Lib Dem decision not to form a coalition with the SNP is widely seen as a tactical error. But he points out the combined number of Lib Dem and SNP MSPs would not have been enough to form a majority.

Nevertheless, he admits that having tasted office — he was transport minister in the last administration — it is frustrating to be out of power.

There is much of Salmond’s new legislative programme that Scott can support, he says, and he has not ruled out a future coalition.

“A lot of it is good,” he says. “We will back the abolition of the council tax bill and we will negotiate with the government on a genuinely local income tax bill.”

Scott is perceived to have a personal dislike of Salmond but he says: “There is no animosity at all. You have to separate a personal relationship from politics.”

He says the door is still open on a future coalition, but adds, “The SNP will be in place for four years. Our tactics will never be to bring down the government for the sake of it. Our tactic is to make the government better and achieve things for Scotland. After that, my job is to make sure we do really well in the next election.”

He won’t be drawn on any future referendum on independence. “We don’t have a referendum at the moment and there will not be a bill for another year. Why should I have to give a definitive view on a position which we won’t ultimately have to decide on until we have a bill in parliament?”

He does not support independence and does not believe a multi-option referendum with a single transferable vote would work, but is not “intuitively” against giving Scots a say. “I don’t support the status quo and I don’t support independence,” he says. “I support more powers for our parliament within the UK.”

Scott has weathered a couple of storms which might have damaged a less popular figure. In 2003 was the break-up of his 14-year marriage to Margaret, the mother of his three children — Lorna, Alasdair, and Cameron. Political pressure was said to have played a role. The family live in Lerwick, across the water from Scott’s 18th-century family home on the island of Bressay. The following year he announced his relationship with Campbell.

“It’s amicable and I have a great relationship with my ex-wife,” he says. “Lots of men and women go through tough periods, marriages stop. The bit that really hurt was when the Daily Mail started pursuing them down the drive.”

Given Stephen stepped down from leadership due to pressure on family life, was it hard for Scott to stand? “I sat down with my kids — 17, 15 and 8 — and said: ‘What do you reckon?’ They were comfortable with it.”

In 2006, he faced controversy over the notorious Edinburgh Accommodation Allowance. Scott, dubbed “lavish Tavish” by tabloids, claimed rent for a flat owned by his sister. He later made a £36,000 profit on a flat bought with help from the allowance scheme and claimed £1,000 a month in mortgage interest payments for a £380,000 Edinburgh home he shares with Campbell, whom he married in May this year.

“I wasn’t doing anything wrong,” he says. “I was following the rules as laid down by the parliament as I have done since elected. At the next election, my majority went up.”

His is a privileged background; his father John, a substantial landowner, is Lord Lieutenant of Shetland. He became politically aware in 1983, he says, when the SDP-Liberal Alliance won 25.4% of the vote and got just 23 seats while Labour, with 27.6%, took 209 seats. From then, he had “a passion” for proportional representation.

Scott is aware that image matters but can make comparisons it is easy to lampoon. At one point he compares the secret communication channel between John F Kennedy and Khrushchev during the Cold War with those between political opponents at Holyrood, and during his acceptance speech thanked his party for awarding him “gold in the Lib Dem Olympics”.

As we leave his “pod” in Holyrood, Scott is informed he has an interview with Jon Snow of Channel 4 News. He looks around to see whose tie he can borrow in an effort to impress Snow, a man renowned for his gaudy neckwear. Alas, there is no Jarl Squad tie on offer. It is, perhaps, the perfect emblem for Scott’s leadership.

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