The Norwegian investor planning to take control of the owner of The Scotsman newspaper, has dropped his plan to put Alex Salmond in the boardroom chair. Christen Ager-Hanssen said the former first minister was "a great guy, but I decided that [would be] too politically infected". His comments came as he sought talks with Johnston Press on how he could help restructure the firm financially. Mr Salmond described it as a "silly season" story. Mr Ager-Hanssen owns 20% of Johnston Press shares. He has said that he intends to build that up to nearly 30%. He told BBC Scotland: "Now that we're going into restructuring, we'd like to have a board with more knowledge and understanding about the technology element of media rather than a public figurehead."