Correspondence between officials at the SNP administration in Edinburgh and the Labour-led local authority show Alex Salmond wanted to block council leader Gordon Matheson from highlighting a city-wide training scheme for fear it upstaged his own initiative.

Tensions surfaced in the run-up to an announcement by the First Minister yesterday of a £2.4 million scheme to train up 1000 jobless young Scots during next year's Commonwealth Games.

The setting was the STV studio in Glasgow where Nicola Sturgeon and Michael Moore went head to head in the first live TV debate of the referendum campaign.

The Ukip leader's antics were a hard act to follow but the Scotland Tonight production team should not feel too disconsolate. Ultimately their debate on the economics of independence was of greater significance to Scotland's future than the question of whether Mr Farage's party has the organisational capacity to stage a press conference in a pub (it hasn't, if you were still in any doubt).

The First Minister said Scotland could "do without Ukip" as an angry street demonstration against the party sparked a major political row yesterday.

Mr Farage was at the centre of chaotic and occasionally comical scenes on Thursday when a press conference in a Royal Mile pub was hijacked by protesters who included the Radical Independence Campaign, a loose coalition of left-wing nationalists.

The UKIP leader was barracked by left-wing and anti-racism protesters who joined a press conference held in a bar on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh.

Press, protesters and UKIP members were all thrown out of The Canons' Gait pub by worried bar staff, forcing Mr Farage to run the gauntlet of more protesters on the streets outside.

He took refuge in a passing taxi but the driver refused to take the fare after the car was mobbed by protesters.