BILLY CAMPBELL has cooked more hot dinners than he’s, well, had hot dinners. His biggest night of all was preparing a four-course meal for 1,100 people. That’s like cooking yourself a meal every night for three years – but doing them all at once.

It was The Ben dinner at Glasgow’s Thistle Hotel. Ah yes, The Ben. The Benevolent Society of the Licensed Trade of Scotland. More than a thousand people connected to the pub and restaurant trade – people who know how to have a good time shall we say, enthusiastically letting their hair down while raising money for charity.

And there was Billy, executive chef of The Thistle, directing 12 chefs, 70 waiters and 60 bar staff to ensure the four courses were served in less than two hours.

You can imagine the Gordon Ramsay-style tirade of foaming fury that he must have worked himself up to that night. But he says, no, that’s not how to get the best out of people. And Billy is an avuncular, cheery person with a ready smile so I believe him. All he would admit to was getting “a bit noisy” when directing the waiters. After all, the food was coming out on trolleys with 100 plates at a time, and they had to be served in 10 minutes or get cold. That’s not the moment when a waiter, often a student earning some part-time cash, should be standing around debating with his pal who their favourite Star Wars character is.

Billy has been executive chef at The Thistle for six years now, and has been Scottish Banqueting Chef of the Year four years in a row. You can understand why. He does not hide behind the huge number of dishes, and still strives to serve up a meal of the same quality as if two people were out sharing a lovely meal together.

Now this is when I have to stop calling it The Thistle. That large hotel in Cambridge Street has had more name changes than Elizabeth Taylor’s marriage certificate. It is now a DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel, and has had £11million spent on refurbishing it, including makeovers for the 300 bedrooms. “The attention to detail was incredible,” Billy tells me. “Fire doors were moved just a few inches as that was the specification that DoubleTree worked to. It looks beautiful.”

Glasgow must be doing something right if someone is willing to spend more than £11m on just one building.

But it also has the largest hotel ballroom in Scotland. That’s why The Ben dinner could seat 1,100 people at long trestle tables. The Lord Provost’s Burns Supper is also held there, with up to 850 guests, and radio station West Sound was once in the Guinness Book of Records for having the largest formal Burns Supper there. I have to admit it was a bit of a squeeze getting out between the tables. And is it just me, or are tables at dinners numbered in a very odd way so that you stand helplessly in the middle still looking for table 38 even though you can see tables 37 and 39? But I digress.

Initially, back in the early eighties, it was the Skean Dhu Hotel. Now this is when my memory gets a bit hazy. There is the old gag about the Glasgow businessman who was told by his young daughter she thought he was allergic to bow ties. When he asked what she meant, she explained that whenever he wore one, he always woke up the next day with a sore head.

So apologies if this is wrong, but I was once at a charity dinner there sitting next to Alastair McMurrich, the hotelier who was brought in to save the Skean Dhu as it was losing thousands of pounds a month. Alastair, I recollect, told me the Skean Dhu was financed by a rich American oilman who built hotels in the Aberdeen area because of the oil boom, and then opened the Glasgow Skean Dhu as he felt the Clyde coast would have a similar oil industry. Well, that never quite worked out and the Skean Dhu was sold on. Remember, this was before budget airlines, so Glasgow did not have the hotel trade it has now. I was told recently there are now more people working in Glasgow’s hotels than worked in the shipyards at their peak.

But back in the eighties it was more difficult. Alastair though, after a colourful career, turned the Skean Dhu around. Oh and the name. Skean dhu might sound Gaelic, but it is actually the Anglicised version of sgian dubh, the small dirk you stuff down the sock when you are wearing a kilt. I think there was a spirited debate in The Herald’s letters page about the missing “b” in the hotel’s name.

So Edinburgh-born Alastair had worked in hotels all over the world including Switzerland and Paris, before becoming head of the royal palaces of the King of Jordan, which meant looking after numerous world leaders including Margaret Thatcher. Running a hotel in Glasgow must have seemed a breeze after that.

It was then the Mount Charlotte Hotels Group tempted him back to Scotland to run the Skean Dhu, which they renamed the Hospitality Inn. This was before the SEC was built so events such as the Scottish Snooker Masters was held at the Hospitality Inn, which later became the Thistle Hotel.

My temperamental memory also reminds me of a Scottish Chambers of Commerce dinner where the American Ambassador to Britain spoke after he and his security detail roared up to the hotel in giant tank-like Hummers.

Now the hotel is looking its best after the DoubleTree investment. I ask if Mr Doubletree is coming to see it. Rookie mistake. DoubleTree is one of 13 Hilton brands with over 400 hotels worldwide. It is owned by Amaris Hospitality, which is a hotel group formed by the investment fund in America, Lone Star. So no Mr Doubletree.

Oh and you get a chocolate chip cookie when you arrive. Who knows, perhaps starting the evening with a cookie will stop that bow tie from giving me a headache.