An echo of Glasgow in the south of France

I order a glass of wine as an excuse to chat to the barman and hope the rest will hear. The questions I ask are not the ones to ask in this district. I'm looking for information, for professional reasons, in streets where all outsiders are potential threats.

A couple turn their back but one skinny Jack the lad hears my accented French and shows off his few words of English: "Newcastle. Good football. My team."

He pulls down his jersey to show a Newcastle strip and grins the gap-toothed smile of those for whom dentistry is a luxury. We're off. Others eventually, reluctantly help, suggesting places and names, giving what little they know, intrigued by my presence and without sympathy for those I seek.

Several hours later, the sky and Med a seamless cobalt blue, I'm sitting in a restaurant in Les Vieux Port, Marseille's fashionable, newly minted curve of the bay where five-star hotels rub shoulders with warehouse conversions, and scores of yachts reflect the rays of a sun starting to power itself up for summer.

Around me skinny and superbly dressed Frenchwomen of all ages prove that here at least Frenchwomen don't get fat. Fur collars or quirky Russian caps are pulled up or on as the Mistral blows in, rattling the masts in the harbour. Little scarves are wound and wrapped, as only they can do, under sharp-boned faces with that enviable French hauteur the world finds so appealing.

One couldn't be anywhere else but in the South of France, and yet all I can think about is Glasgow.

It is not just the banners proudly proclaiming Marseille European Capital of Culture 2013; the sprawl of a city where Arab markets, mingling old clothes and bashed pots and pans, spread out under fly-overs and memories of Paddy's Market intrude; not even the brave, glossy multi-billion building and renovation programme so akin to Glasgow's surge in the early 1980s onwards; not even the juxtaposition of poverty and wealth.

No, it's far more subtle than that. It's an attitude, an edge, a touchy pride in a city, even sullenly present in those in the machine gun-toting, drug-ridden northern edges where almost 40% live below the poverty line, noses pressed against the windows of an unattainable world.

And a hope, as there undeniably was in Glasgow, that the cultural award signalled the beginning of a new prosperity, a new image for an often derided and snubbed city.

Monsieur Newcastle, as I called him, could have been any of the chippy neds I met in my early days as a reporter in Glasgow: that same mix of gallows humour, cocky knowledge and defiance.

"This place is merde," he says gesturing to his streets. "They've pushed us out here, torn down our houses, they don't want us spoiling their city of culture. We've to be hidden in this hellhole. There's nothing for us there – not even jobs."

In the next breath he's telling me what I must see before I leave: climb up to the basilica of Notre-Dame de la Garde and look over Marseille in all its tumbled glory, drive down to Cassis along the jagged coastline, try to go inland.

Of course, for all my perceived similarities between the two cities, there are major differences.

Marseille is the city of the French Connection – all the organised crime of the Med passes through it as do the dispossessed of north Africa and even newer security threats.

Kalashnikovs are the weapons of choice here – 300 were seized last year – and many young men have been gunned down in the city's drugs wars. Violence in the northern suburbs is so endemic that a local mayor recently suggested only military intervention could begin to tackle the problem.

Knocking on tenement doors last week, waiting for shutters to open as a head appeared to demand who rang, reminded me a little of forays to Blackhill many years ago. The difference was that here the sun shone, outside walls had the scratched, pastel patina of hot lands, and the streets could be considered rather beautiful in their ancient, straggly layout.

And the faces were black, rich brown, carried the Italian stamp of the earlier immigrants or the fine-boned beauty of the Senegalese. But, as in Blackhill, with, of course, one or two exceptions, there was an underlying sense of courtesy to a stranger, a curiosity that over-rode fear on every level.

Late that night back in Les Vieux Port, as cars raced along the harbour and the bars' happy hours lasted seven, Marseille was an intoxicating mix of music, laughter and youth.

As with Glasgow, I first came across it in my own youth and feared, actually hated, its seedy, run-down first look. As with Glasgow, I think I will grow to love its mad, dancing spirit and above all, its hope for better times. And, unlike Glasgow for me, it's only a 50-minute flight away.

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