Glasgow

by Alan Taylor

  In future, then, the Glaswegian will come in two types. Here is a day’s timetable for each:

  The Aspirer

  7.30 Rise; muesli and orange juice

  8.00 Jog.

  9.30 Office; work on new software deal.

  13.00 Meet Roddy, Fergus and Diarmid in Gertrude’s wine bar. Discuss scheme to open print shop in disused railway signal cabin.

  15.00 Festival shopping with the wife. Shiver while eating hot croissant and watching imitation of Marcel Marceau.

  19.30 To see Scottish Opera’s new production of Rigoletto, updated to the Gorbals of 1935.

  22.30 Supper with lawyer friends at the Café de Paris. Oban-landed monkfish off.

  23.50 Home; remember to adjust burglar alarm.

  The Non-Aspirer

  11.00 Rise; Wonderloaf and PG Tips.

  12.00 Dress.

  13.00 Watch Pebble Mill at One.

  15.00 Watch Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory for the fourth time.

  18.00 Meet pusher, buy £5 bag.

  22.00 Wonder what happened during the past three hours.

  24.00 Steal car for purposes of burglary elsewhere, to finance purchase of more £5 bags.

  Meanwhile the most considered judgement on the new Glasgow comes from Alasdair Gray. For thirty years Gray painted Glasgow and its people without making a fortune doing so. Then, three years ago, he published his first novel, Lanark, which attracted notice and praise from London and even further afield. Many remarked on its length, ambition and anarchic brilliance.

  I asked Gray the old question. Had Glasgow improved? He didn’t rush to answer.

  ‘Och, ha, hum, quack-quack,’ said Gray, who often turns a mysterious phrase. ‘Well, if you’re middle-class, like I am, and if you’re middle-aged, like I am, and if you work in a luxury trade, like I do, and if you’ve had a bit of luck recently, like I have, then yes, Glasgow is a better place.’

  JOCK STEIN, 1985

  Alex Ferguson

  In 1967, Celtic football club, managed by John ‘Jock’ Stein (1922–85), became the first British team to win the European Cup, defeating Inter Milan in the final. Stein, who was born in Burnbank, Lanarkshire, left Celtic in 1978 for a brief period as manager of Leeds United, returning north the same year to manage Scotland, where one of his assistants was Alex Ferguson (1941–).

  Everybody in the game knows that Jock Stein’s record as Celtic manager was as triumphant as any ever achieved in the history of club football. The best tribute to his genius is not the winning of nine successive league championships, the countless other trophies he collected or even the historic breakthrough that made Celtic the first British club to lift the European Cup. What sets him apart more than anything else is the fact that the team who devastated Inter Milan on a magical evening in 1967 consisted of ten players born within a dozen miles of Celtic Park and one outsider, Bobby Lennox, who came from thirty miles away in Ayrshire. Jock won the European Cup with a Glasgow and District Select. At no other time, before or since, has one of the greatest competitions of world football been blitzed by such a concentration of locally produced talent. It was as close to a miracle as management can go. So who could blame me for being excited by the prospect of working with the man who created it?

  Stein had just about every attribute required of a great manager, but none of his talents was more significant than his judgement of people. Whether a man was playing for him, or against him, Jock specialised in probing assessments of strengths and weaknesses. He had worked underground in the pits until he was twenty-seven and he had a wider, richer experience of human nature than is readily available to somebody confined since schooldays to the enclosed, insulated world of professional football. I am sure I have been helped by the fact that I spent a full apprenticeship as a toolmaker, that in my formative years I was exposed to the values of the workplace other than the training ground and the football field. His talent for dealing with all kinds of men probably counted as much as his technical knowledge and his advanced ideas on the game in enabling him to establish himself as a manager. He matured to greatness very quickly.

  Stein was a big man in every sense. When he came into a room he dominated it. You always knew Jock was present. He seemed to know everybody’s first name and that’s a wonderful asset. Matt Busby had it. When Jock left Dunfermline to manage Hibs he had a wee share in a bookie’s in Dunfermline and I remember going into the betting shop one day when he was there. He said: ‘Hello Alex, are you enjoying playing at Dunfermline?’ It made me feel really important. When people treat you that way you are instantly in favour of them. I had never spoken to Jock in my life but he knew me.

  My first assignment as Jock’s assistant with Scotland was a friendly match against Yugoslavia in September 1984, and I felt the preparation was good. Well, it couldn’t have been too bad – we won 6–1, with Kenny Dalglish and Graeme Souness both at their majestic best. I revelled in the opportunity to operate from an assistant’s position, blissfully free of all the extra responsibilities that crowded in on me as a club manager. I did not have to handle the press, deal with directors or cope with the countless obligations that go with being in overall charge of a group of players. Big Jock was a master in all those departments, so I was able to concentrate on working with some great footballers in training and studying how they applied themselves.

  The Scotland get-togethers were an absolute revelation for me, priceless access to the mind and personality of Jock Stein. I am sure there are times when he got fed up with my incessant barrage of questions. I was so determined to find out as much as I could about one of the greatest managers of all time that I used every moment to draw enlightenment from him. On general football matters he was always forthcoming and educational but the brick wall went up if there was a hint of a negative about Celtic. I felt – and it wasn’t exactly an isolated opinion – that Celtic had treated him disgracefully in failing to reward the years of inspired management that had brought the club the greatest run of success in its history. So I could not resist asking him how he had felt about the insult of being offered a job supervising the Celtic development pool, which amounted to reducing a supreme football man to a fund-raiser. His reaction was astonishingly low-key and devoid of bitterness. He said: ‘When you are successful it is fine for a time and then they maybe think you are too successful and that the success wasn’t really due to you at all.’ End of story.

  Another subject that Jock consistently refused to expand upon was how he went about making Celtic the first British club to win the European Cup. Everybody knows that his contribution – in finding and developing the players and then supplying them with tactics brilliantly devised to suit their skills – was utterly crucial, but he shrugged off any attempt to give him a substantial share of the glory. His modesty was extraordinary, and it was sincere. When the European Cup was mentioned, he would eulogise the players who won it and launch into some of the marvellous human stories surrounding that great team. We would be sitting in the reception lobby of the hotel at 2 a.m. with one hilarious tale following another. Many involved wee Jimmy Johnstone. According to Jock, when his phone rang at home late on a Friday night a picture of Jimmy would leap instantly into his mind and his first thought would be: ‘Which police station this time?’

  Having lost the second of our World Cup [qualifying] matches with Spain by 1–0 in Seville three months earlier, we now found that qualification for Mexico would hinge on our final group fixture against Wales at Ninian Park on 10 September 1985. We needed at least a draw to earn a play-off with the winner of the Oceanic group, Australia . . . There were, naturally, signs of nerves at the start of the game. I don’t care what anybody says, when the crowd at Cardiff start singing that Welsh national anthem it creates some atmosphere. There were 35,000 in the ground that night and when they gave it voice it was bound to stir their players. That was real motivation. The Welsh team were revved and in the first half they gave us a hard time. Wales went ahead when the ball was driv
en in from the left-hand side and Sparky Hughes took the goal brilliantly. So at half-time we were down 1–0 and in the dressing-room Jock got stuck into wee Gordon Strachan. He was going to take Strachan off and bring Davie Cooper on at that point. Gordon was upset but there was nothing new in that.

  Then all of a sudden Jock left the main part of the dressing-room. Hugh Allan, the physiotherapist, had called him into the bathroom area. I went across and sat down with Gordon.

  ‘What Jock is saying is for the sake of the team. You’re not playing as well as you should.’

  ‘I can’t believe he is saying that to me,’ Gordon responded.

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘he’s right. Just settle down. You’re not coming off. He’ll give you ten minutes. Get your game together.’ Then big Jock called.

  ‘Alex, come here.’

  I walked into the bathroom area and I’ll never forget the scene that greeted me. There was a kind of wooden plinth and Jim [Leighton, Scotland’s – and Aberdeen’s – goalkeeper] was half-sitting on it with an expression that told me straightaway there was a serious problem.

  ‘He’s lost his contact lens.’

  Jock said it in a way that suggested he was assuming I had known about the lenses and hadn’t told him. I swear I had absolutely no idea that Jim used them. I was so dumbfounded and there was such a swirl of anger and embarrassment going through me that at first I didn’t say a word. When I did speak it was to ask him if it would be better to take the second lens out and play without any. ‘I wouldn’t be able to see the ball,’ he told us. That meant we had to put Alan Rough in goal for the second half . . .

  As everybody knows, we didn’t lose the match. With ten minutes left, David Speedie was going through on a ball when it bounced up and hit David Phillips on the arm and we were given a penalty. The contact was accidental but it was blatant hand-ball and the Dutch referee, Mr Keizer, did not hesitate over the decision. Davie Cooper stayed cool and directed the ball low away to Neville Southall’s left and into the corner of the net and we were on our way to the next summer’s World Cup finals in Mexico.

  When the equaliser went in, Jock didn’t say a word. Shortly afterwards the referee blew for a free kick but Jock thought it was the full-time whistle. There were actually a couple of minutes to go but the Big Man rose to move towards Mike England, the Wales manager. Jock was annoyed about a lot of the stuff England had been quoted as saying about the Scotland team and I am sure the idea was to go across and say, ‘Hard luck, son.’ It would have been a touch of the old sharp-edged commiserations, doing things right by letting Mike know he didn’t fancy somebody running off at the mouth. But as he rose from the bench he stumbled. I had been keeping an eye on him throughout the second half and when he began to fall I grabbed for him and shouted to Hughie Allan to do the same. The doctor joined us and the medics came out of the tunnel immediately. Hughie and I held him up until the others took over and helped him inside. I went back to the bench and at the end of the game I told the players to stay on the pitch. We didn’t know whether Jock was in the dressing-room or what was happening. We were given the signal that it was all right to go in and when we asked how he was the first impression we received was that he was recovering. There were no real celebrations in the dressing-room but I felt reassured enough to start saying ‘well done’ to the players and telling them that the Boss had suffered a heart attack but was going to be all right. Everything appeared to be OK and when I was told I would have to deal with the press, I was starting to warm to that job. Some of the reporters had been a bit critical of Jock and I was relishing addressing a few words to them. But when I came out I saw Graeme Souness at the door of the medical room and he was crying.

  ‘I think he’s gone,’ Graeme said. I couldn’t believe it.

  THE PATTER, 1985

  Michael Munro

  Following the success of Stanley Baxter’s Parliamo Glasgow, Michael Munro published The Patter: A Guide to Current Glasgow Usage, which remains essential for daily discourse. Described dismissively by the Scottish National Dictionary as ‘impoverished and bastardised Scots’, Glaswegian is a unique and dynamic tongue with its own extensive vocabulary and distinctive grammar. Students of language have suggested that Irish immigrants may have influenced its development. Another significant influence may have been the author John Joy ‘J.J.’ Bell (1871–1934), whose incredibly popular novel Wee Macgreegor (1902) and its sequels are replete with Glaswegianisms. The language, if such it is, is remarkable for its ‘notorious’ glottal stop and the absence of the initial ‘th’ which has a tendency to change ‘that’ to ‘’at’ and ‘there’ to ‘’err’.

  Arab In Glasgow this has been a term of abuse since even before the rise of the oil sheikhs: ‘Get lost ya Arab ye!’

  bampot or bamstick An idiot, fool, or sometimes a nutcase. This is often shortened to bam, and any eccentric named Thomas risks being dubbed ‘Tam the Bam’.

  coup or cowp To spill, overturn, or dump: ‘I’ve couped a pint over my good denims’, ‘The big eejit couped the table ower’, ‘You’re no meant tae coup yer rubbish here.’ A coup is a dump or rubbish tip. It can also be applied insultingly to an untidy place: ‘His bedroom’s a right coup.’

  Dan A nickname for a Roman Catholic: ‘Are you a Billy or a Dan?’

  electric soup Vivid term for a mixture of meths and red biddy as drunk by alcoholic down-and-outs.

  finger Often pronounced to rhyme with singer.

  gaun A local pronunciation of go on. Used on its own or with an insulting name it is a term of rude dismissal: ‘Gaun ya daft eejit ye!’ Gaun yersel is a phrase of encouragement or approval, perhaps coming from football in the sense of a player making a lone run. I was once present at a rally in Queen’s Park which was addressed by Tony Benn. Amidst the applause and cheering that followed his speech a wee Glasgow wifie was heard to cry: ‘Gaun yersel Mr Bogeyman!’

  hackit Ugly, unattractive, most often applied to girls: ‘Chic got aff with the big blonde and Ah wis left wi her hackit wee mate.’

  ile A Scots pronunciation of oil. The phrase away for ile means wasted, useless, finished, etc: ‘His brain’s away for ile.’

  jiggin, the A dance: ‘Are ye goin tae the jiggin the night?’

  keepie-uppie Footballing game of juggling with the ball using feet, knees, head – anything other than hands. One of the legends attached to the Scotland–England fixture is that during Scotland’s 1967 Wembley victory Scotland’s dominance of the World Cup holders was so complete that Jim Baxter was able to play keepie-uppie with the ball.

  laldy To give someone laldy is to give him a thrashing or a beating. To give it laldy is to do something vigorously or enthusiastically: ‘The band’s been givin it laldy the night.’

  mince Mysteriously enough this prosaic word for humble fare has blossomed into one of the most versatile words in the dialect. It is used to mean nonsense, rubbish: ‘Yer heid’s full a mince’, ‘He talks a lot a mince’. It is also a general term for anything unpleasant that finds its way to somewhere it shouldn’t be: ‘The back a ma jeans is aw mince!’ Extremes of denseness are also measured by it: ‘He’s as thick as mince.’ Someone who is listless or lacking in animation may attract a comment like: ‘What’s up wi you? Ye’re sittin there like a pun a mince.’ If a person succeeds in spoiling something for someone else, taking the wind out of someone’s sails, etc., he might say: ‘That’s sickened his mince for him.’

  nippy-sweetie A jocular term for a drink of spirits: ‘How about a nippy-sweetie to finish off?’ Also used to describe a bad-tempered person: ‘Just keep out of that yin’s road; she’s a bit of a nippy-sweetie.’ The derivation is from the sense of nippy meaning sharp-tasting, burning to the taste, etc.

  ooyah An exclamation of pain: ‘Ooyah! Get aff ma fit!’

  plootered Drunk.

  quoted Well-quoted means highly-regarded, well-esteemed: ‘I hear the challenger’s well-quoted.’ Not quoted means given no chance, unimportant or useless: ‘Never min
d what that balloon thinks – he’s no quoted.’

  run-out To do a run-out is to eat a meal in a restaurant and then abscond without paying; a most unsavoury practice.

  scratcher One’s bed: ‘Ach, Ah’ll away tae ma scratcher.’

  Teddy Bears Nickname for Rangers FC. The fact that this is rhyming slang becomes clear when you know that Bears is pronounced Berrs and thus rhymes with Gers.

  urny Local version of aren’t, as in ‘Youse urny gaun’, ‘We urny comin’, ‘They urny here’.

  vicky A local term for a rude V-sign: ‘We gied them the vicky an got aff wur mark.’

  wee man A friendly title for a small person: ‘Look who it is – how’s it gaun wee man?’ Someone wishing to register disgust, amazement, exasperation, etc. without resorting to profanity may say: ‘Aw in the name a the wee man!’ Perhaps this is a euphemism for the Devil.

  yin A local form of one: ‘That yin’s mines.’ It can be applied to a person (‘She’ll come to no good, that yin’) and is often used in nicknames or terms of address, as in big yin, wee yin, auld yin, young yin. The fact that Billy Connolly is known as The Big Yin has occasioned some confusion down south and I remember hearing him introduced by an English TV announcer as the big Yin. No doubt millions assumed this was some kind of derogatory term for a Scotsman.

  THE MATTER OF SHIRT-TAILS, 1989

  Anne Simpson

  For a city that has long had a reputation for dreariness, Glasgow is surprisingly fashion conscious. The phrase ‘dressed to kill’ may be ambiguous but it is one Glasgow men and women embrace in a manner that makes the rest of Scotland look like scruffs. For men, a sharp suit, a loud tie and a Borsalino fedora are just the ticket, even if it makes them look like one of Al Capone’s gunslingers. Women are even more apt to put on the style. Come the weekend, they are to be seen wandering around the designer boutiques of the Merchant City trying desperately to stay aloft in heels so high they turn midgets instantly into giraffes. Moreover, when the thermometer plunges, they would rather discard clothes than add layers. Necklines plunge, hems rise and the bling is blinding. This is not a new phenomenon but, as Anne Simpson notes in this piece from The Glasgow Herald Book of Glasgow, it became more noticeable towards the end of the 1980s, when there was influx of French and Italian labels. Until then, no one surely would have dared to call Glasgow effete. Theda Bara, by the way, was a star of the silent screen and one of cinema’s earliest sex symbols.