SO where would you go for a meal in Glasgow and watch some young guys fighting?
The trite answer is you could stand outside a kebab shop on a Friday night. But for the cognoscenti the real answer is the St Andrew's Sporting Club, which for 40 years has combined fine dining with the pugilistic arts of the square ring.
It began in the Albany Hotel in the early 1970s when the Albany brought glamour to what was a dreich city. It was as if the film of Glasgow had suddenly switched from black and white to colour as the Albany epitomised dressing up for a night out and indulging in excessive behaviour without Calvinist guilt coursing through you. Part of that glamour was the St Andrew's Sporting Club, an institution where men – always just men – would dress up in dinner suits and bow ties, meet friends in convivial surroundings, eat good food, and watch boxers pummel each other. Nothing has changed, except that with the demolition of the Albany, the St Andrew's Club moved to the Radisson Hotel near Central Station.
Overseeing it all is ebullient boxing promoter Tommy Gilmour who took over the running of the St Andrew's from his dad, and has never let standards slip. The story is told that when he stopped one chap, and told him he couldn't attend as it was black tie, the minor celebrity came out with the classic line: "Do you know who I am?"
"This is a sporting club," Tommy quietly but firmly replied, "Not a treatment centre for Alzheimer's."
Only once in the club's history have the men even been allowed to take their jackets off. Recalls Tommy: "It was the late eighties and the temperature was 80 degrees outside. You could see everybody was melting in their seats, so Archie Macpherson, the guest chairman, announced: 'Gentlemen, as a one-off, you may remove your jackets'."
One professional sportsman arrived in an immaculate dinner suit but no bow tie, as his thick-muscled neck had a circumference that defeated all such ties. Tommy would not admit defeat, and got the chap to tie two bow ties together with one at the front and the other discreetly tucked at the back of his jacket.
It does, though, have a logic. Some boxing events can get a bit rowdy amongst the partisan crowds, but not the St Andrew's. "When people are dressed like gentlemen, invariably they behave like gentlemen," says Tommy.
And the men-only rule? Tommy simply sees it as giving wives and girlfriends the night off – and besides, he says, they can come to the two annual dinner dances. Tommy, one suspects, is not winning an honorary feminist award any day soon.
The club has always met on a Monday as many of the early members were bookies and restaurateurs who took a Monday off after a busy weekend. That no longer applies to most club members now, but Tommy's philosophy is why change what appears to work?
I had assumed that folk ate while the boxers boxed, with the danger of arcs of blood spattering over their crisp white shirts and dinner plates, but I've obviously been watching too many bad action movies. "That would be disrespectful to the boxers," says Tommy. First there is the dinner, light-hearted speakers, then three or four bouts of between six or eight two-minute rounds. These are all up-and-coming young boxers, but they are evenly matched to ensure good contests.
Forget the stereotype of lumbering neanderthal heavyweights. Last week's monthly meeting was showcasing extremely fit featherweights and flyweights. First in the ring was Mohammed Waqas from Middlesbrough, and I would have liked to have used the phrase "the mountain coming to Mohammed" but as his Dundee opponent Jamie Wilson weighed only 8st 4lbs, it hardly applied.
First impressions of live boxing? The gloves are harder than the big soft training gloves you might have seen in a gym, and the speed of the punches can deceive the eye. But the footwork also catches your eye – the ballet of menace as they constantly move forwards and backwards, looking for an opening. No boxer stands still for a moment. The fact they are throwing punches at the same time is utterly impressive.
And are the wined and dined guests paying attention? Well there is a comely young woman from a different type of gentlemen's club – the type that has poles, and I'm not meaning Eastern Europeans – who wears an astonishingly short tartan skirt while holding up a placard denoting which round it is. Hardly anyone pays her attention as they are still talking about the round they have just seen.
The St Andrew's Club opened 40 years ago with a memorable clash between Jim Watt and Ken Buchanan in a British title fight, and since those days three-quarters of all Scottish boxing champions have fought at the St Andrew's at some stage of their career.
Curiously, professional rugby player Jon Welsh was taken to the St Andrew's Club by his grandfather when he was only eight. That inspired him to take up boxing, and it was when he was at the gym training that he met a rugby player who suggested he try the sport.
"If my grandfather had not taken me to my first night at the St Andrew's I wouldn't have taken up boxing and wouldn't have played for Glasgow Warriors or my country," says Jon.
And before you ask, yes, at the age of eight, he was wearing a dinner suit.
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