SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon "hammered" the Prime Minister in the live TV leaders' debate, according to former first minister Alex Salmond.

Mr Salmond, who is hoping to make a return to Westminster in May, said his successor had "brilliantly spelled out" the SNP plans for an alternative to austerity.

He said he "wasn't at all surprised" by Ms Sturgeon's performance in the TV clash - which will be the only debate featuring all of the party leaders in the General Election campaign.

Former SNP leader Mr Salmond made the comments as he campaigned in Kirkcaldy, Fife, which was until recently former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown's constituency.

Mr Brown has stood down from the Commons, with Mr Salmond claiming SNP candidate Roger Mullin was poised to win the seat - where Labour had a majority of just over 23,000 in the 2010 election.

More than 100 people waited in the pouring rain to see the former first minster, who told them: "Last night I was speaking in St Andrews ... as I was speaking I was getting the information from the debate, how Nicola was wiping the floor with the old boys' network.

"The Scottish National Party are on the march and it's the SNP that will put Scotland on the map."

He added that Ms Sturgeon had "laid out a strategy for a progressive alliance" at Westminster in the election campaign, which could potentially see the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Green Party working with Labour in the event of a hung parliament.

Conservative chief whip Michael Gove has already warned such an arrangement would be a "lethal cocktail".

The senior Tory told Sky News the SNP would pull Ed Miliband "well to the left" if he was forced to rely on their votes in the Commons.

Mr Gove said: "I don't think people would like the potential chaos that would ensue if you had Ed Miliband as prime minister having to make every decision with Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond auditing it to decide whether or not that decision was in the interests of Scotland and Scottish nationalism rather than the whole of the United Kingdom."

But Mr Salmond said: "I think Michael Gove is showing all the signs of panic and the distress that the prime minister was showing in the debate last night when he was hammered by Nicola Sturgeon."

Her performance in the TV debate gave the SNP campaign a "great boost", he added.

"I think the First Minister is wiping the floor with the Westminster old boys' network."

Mr Salmond, the SNP candidate in Gordon in Aberdeenshire, stood beside Mr Mullin and told the crowd: "We're going to be elected and we're going to guide that marvellous SNP group of amazing women, and one or two men as well, to make sure that we do the things that Nicola so brilliantly spelled out last night.

"To move away from austerity, to make sure that the promises, the commitments, the vow to Scotland, is redeemed in full, to make gains for Scotland and to aid progressive politics across these islands."