Funny thing, politics.

You spend most of your professional life agitating to change an anomaly, then, when the first real opportunity comes along to solve the situation, you give it the thumbs down. Such is the paradox bedevilling Tam Dalyell, grand keeper of the West Lothian Question. "The thing is, I am implacably opposed to independence," he says. "I think it would be disastrous for Scotland. But if the country votes yes in the referendum, the West Lothian Question becomes irrelevant because Scottish MPs would vanish from the Palace of Westminster."

Problem over, then, unless, of course, the independence referendum is defeated in 2014. In which case the old WLQ would remain like a chronic chilblain flaring up in hostile weather to chafe the body politic down south. But let us begin at the beginning, which means going back to the late 1970s when the bold Tam – less familiarly known as Sir Thomas Dalyell Loch of The Binns, 11th Baronet – rose in the Commons and solemnly inquired how it could be that he, the Labour member for West Lothian, could vote on matters of health in Blackburn, Lancashire, when its own MP could not vote on similar matters in Blackburn, West Lothian?

That was during the passage of the 1978 Scotland Bill – to devolve a degree of power north of the Border. For an excruciating 45 days every clause, sub-clause and debatable amendment triggered unabashed nagging from Dalyell. As the days wore on to groans from fellow members, he would close his thunderous demand by intoning the words: "It cannot be asked too often -" Driven to exasperation by Dalyell's self-described "pomposity", the late John Smith, future Labour leader, shouted from the Front Bench: "Oh yes it bloody well can be asked too often, Tam." The rebuff did nothing to halt his persistence. To this day Dalyell, now in his 80th year, has not heard a satisfactory answer.

But that word "pomposity" isn't really a good fit. Historian Peter Hennessy catches Dalyell's personality better when he describes him as a man of "warm spirit, quirky temperament and great tenacity". And certainly on the issues so central to his political life – air traffic control, the need for donor organs, the Balkans, Lockerbie, Iraq, weapons of mass destruction, and the dreaded WLQ – Dalyell approached each with a bellow of pedantry and angst. On the cover of his memoir, The Importance Of Being Awkward – which brings him to Aye Write! in the Mitchell Library, Glasgow today – he appears almost theatrically melancholic in repose. But the pages reveal a witty man of old-fashioned honour and compassion whose thick inventories of meticulous data – the nit-picking stuff slicker politicians choose to ignore – always torpedoed the spin doctors' cunning.

When he left Parliament in 2005, Dalyell had reached the venerable position of Father of the House and despite his distinction as perpetual scourge, he is affectionately remembered there as one who never held power but, from the back benches, kept the mighty on their toes. Reflecting on today's politicians he says: "A Tam Dalyell type wouldn't stand a cat-in-hell's chance of being selected. The current rules and vetting would see to that." In the 1970s, when he was voting against devolution, Labour regarded him as such an irritant the party sent a snotty complaint to his constituency. How did they react? "They threw it straight in the bucket," he retorts. "They said: 'He's our Tam, and if we think he's stepped out of line, we'll deal with it.'"

But conversing now from the historic House of Binns, near Linlithgow, where Dalyells have lived since the 1600s, he reflects that he's not to everybody's taste. "The real truth is that I am not in any way sensitive about being a bore. But I am in favour of treating everyone with good manners." In that case does he regret calling Mrs Thatcher a liar? That accusation came during an astonishing political exchange when Dalyell claimed that the then Prime Minister had been economical with the truth in her statements about the Belgrano, the Argentine warship sunk by Britain during the Falklands conflict.

"Ah, be careful there," he cautions. "I didn't call Mrs Thatcher a liar. I said that on a particular occasion she had told a particular lie for a particular purpose." Mrs Thatcher had claimed she was unaware of Peruvian peace proposals before she ordered the attack on the Belgrano. But Dalyell, on a visit to Peru to see President Fernando Belaunde Terry and Manuel Ulloa Elias, his prime minister, learned that she had indeed known of the proposals. His recollection now of the build-up to the war itself provides a fascinating vignette. Dalyell was the one Labour MP who "paddled along" to Downing Street to discuss the situation with the PM.

Arriving at No 10, he prefaced his scolding with courtesy. "I said: 'It's very good of you to see me, Margaret.' And she replied: 'Oh, I always have time for the awkward squad.' But I could tell she was getting higher and higher, and I suddenly realised: 'My God, she wants a fight. She doesn't want to be deprived of a military victory.'" Does he ever wonder what Mrs Thatcher might have called him behind closed doors? "Well, Dennis Thatcher was always very nice to me. But I think she probably called me a pain in the arse."

Yet here we are, the Falklands in the news again, a question mark still hanging over the conviction of the dying Lockerbie bomber, and the anomalous WLQ infuriating as ever. All unfinished business? "Absolutely. I would like them to be resolved before I die." An independent Scotland would, at least, provide one resolution. Would that not persuade him to vote yes instead of no? "The thing is, I am for unity, not division. In fact I'm one of a number of people – not quite as small a minority as you might think – who would abolish the Scottish Parliament and return to the regions."

Dalyell inherited the baronetcy of the Binns in 1972 but the property, which incorporates a medieval tower house, was gifted to the National Trust for Scotland by his mother in 1944. It takes its name from Binns Hill, and Dalyell and Kathleen have lived cheerfully among its ancestral ghosts all their married life. It was here that Dalyell became something of a noted bee-keeper until politics rudely intervened. "That was June 1962, and on a Sunday my bees swarmed. Well, you simply cannot let anybody deal with swarms unless they know what they are about because it's extremely dangerous."

Dalyell spent the next day clambering through bushes, retrieving the escapees, then proceeded to London where on Tuesday morning he was summoned before the chief whip, the martinet Herbert Bowden. "He said: 'Where were you yesterday? You missed eight votes on the finance bill.' I told him my bees had swarmed. 'Your bees swarmed!' he cried." Dalyell had been an MP for just two weeks. Later that day, Bowden, passing in a corridor, beckoned him with a finger. "He said: 'I've been chief whip of this party for eight years - German re-armament, Suez, the Bevanites - I thought I knew every excuse there was. But bees, that's a new one.'"

And now it's peacocks. Having read the recent Herald story about a rogue flock wrecking the gardens of Gargunnock village in Stirlingshire, Dalyell and his wife have offered to be the birds' saviours of last resort. "We have 19 and actually that's quite enough. But we don't want to see these peacocks put to the sword, so we're willing to give them a home."

Somebody once asked Shirley Williams if Tam Dalyell was an eccentric. No, she said. He was far more special than that. An original.

Tam Dalyell will be talking about The Importance Of Being Awkward (Birlinn, £25), at Aye Write!, Mitchell Library, Glasgow, today at 12.30pm.