IS Alex Salmond being rehabilitated? The former first minister has been all over our screens these last few weeks.

Which makes a kind of sense, I guess. His old party, the SNP, is in chaos. But the very nature of its crisis – which includes a criminal investigation – means there is little or nothing current leaders or insiders can say.

So, perhaps understandably, broadcasters and newspaper journalists turn to yesterday’s men – and they are usually men – for comment.

Still, it was striking – almost newsworthy in itself – that a lot of journalists wanted to give Mr Salmond a microphone The former FM, who three years ago was acquitted of sexual assaults, even hosted a phone-in on Talk TV.

It did not seem to matter that his last gig was fronting a show on the main propaganda division of Vladimir Putin’s war machine.

I think the Alba leader, 68, sold what was left of his credibility to a regime which, among other crimes, jails and persecutes independence supporters.

So I find it bizarre that anybody would treat him as some kind of authority on self-determination.

But, don’t worry, this is not another column on the character and judgement of our last but one first minister.

I think most Scots have Mr Salmond’s number: polls suggest he is among the least popular politicians in the country, even if he still inspires a small group of fanatical supporters.

No, what fascinates me is Mr Salmond’s ongoing profile in Scottish public discourse. He his not alone.

We – and I do not just mean journalists – seem spellbound by a small number of soundbite-giving over-confident auld fellas.

It’s like we can’t throw off the “cult of the Big Man”, – and a good few of the men concerned are full of what polite folk call “it”. Scotland is not unique in this respect.

The preposterous Donald Trump, remember, became America’s president after he was caught on mike boasting he grabbed women “by the pussy”.

Political scientists sometimes talk of “Big Men”. To be fair, they usually mean actual dictators rather than the diddies who take money from – or fawn over – the Putins of this world.

So I don’t think it is exactly fair to talk about “Big Men” in this country. Maybe – at the risk of offending Billy Connolly – we can discuss their clownish Scottish equivalent, the Big Yins?

What is it that keeps drawing us back to the same old names and faces – male, white politicians and commentators? Even – surprisingly frequently – long after they have blown up their own credibility? As long, that is, as they are kent men. How come? And why do we not talk about this problem more?

Hey, we are not going answer these questions in a single column. But there are a few things I think we should keep in mind when trying to do so.

The first is that Scotland has a history of macho populists. Academics Rory Scothorne and Ewan Gibbs – of Edinburgh and Glasgow universities respectively – at the beginning of this decade traced this trend through the left politics of the 20th century.

They focused on militants from the Leninist John MacLean through the Stalinist-turned-nationalist Jimmy Reid to socialist firebrand and Putin media contributor Tommy Sheridan.

Dr Gibbs and Dr Scothorne argued the very masculine radical left populist had died out – though one of the men they featured, 85-year-old Jim Sillars featured on the front page of this very paper only last week.

Which is also pretty intriguing: Mr Sillars, a retired lobbyist for Middle Eastern business interests who bizarrely argues Ukraine is in Russia’s “sphere of influence”, has not been in front line politics for three decades.

He can still give an entertaining if anachronistic soundbite though. And, crucially, a lot of folk did seem to want to read what he has to say.

The current Big Yins are not inventing a tradition of headline-grabbing masculine populism. They are adapting an existing one.

There is another wee nuance here. Our attention is defaulting to the older men after the exit of a younger female leader.

Fiona McKay, a lecturer in journalism, media and communication at Strathclyde University, has seen this pattern before.

“Historically, because of their outsider status and perception that they bring something different to the masculine ‘norm’ of politics, women leaders can often be seen to be the ones to be transformative, to clean-up politics,” said Dr McKay, who has spent years researching the media portrayals of women politicians.

“This is why we may see them drafted in in times of political crisis. This means their implication in subsequent failures may be used as further misplaced arguments that women are not up to the job and perpetuates old gendered stereotypes about politicians again.”

There are practical reasons we reporters call Big Yins. We know we will get a usable quote from a person the public recognises, though possibly does not respect. This is a vicious cycle, of course. New voices will struggle to secure the kind of profile needed to become page-one news if we do not feature them.

We journalists have been coy on how declining resources have affected our trade. Across the industry, it has brought a narrower repertoire of news, fewer topics covered in detail. Has news digitalisation also meant we feature a smaller cast of characters, that we continually return to the same old box office men? Maybe.

There is some good news here. There are efforts, not least in this paper, to bring new voices in to our media. Is progress fast enough? No.

Dr McKay thinks she knows why. “There’s lots of work being done to platform diverse contributors,” she said. “But ultimately more diverse newsrooms, particularly at the top, will contribute to more diversity in who we see in the news.”

Me? I am tired of the Big Yins and their often self-contradictory, self-important, self-aggrandising takes. Let’s pass the mike.