GROWING up in the east of Scotland in the Fifties and Sixties the idea that I might ever work and live in Glasgow was no more likely than I would become a prospector in the Yukon. What little I then knew of Glasgow did not inspire confidence. While the front page of the Daily Express – of which my father was an ardent reader – rejoiced in tales of social deprivation and industrial unrest, the back page trumpeted the monotonous success of Rangers and Celtic, both anathema to a Hearts sympathiser. Nor did my schooling do anything to dispel the myths. One day a teacher led our class to the top of Arthur’s Seat and instructed us to look north, south, east and, finally, west, where in the far distance charcoal-coloured plumes of noxious smoke appeared to be rising. “That,” said the dominie, in an apocalyptic tone, “is Glasgow. Pray god you never have to go there.”

Glasgow, we vaguely appreciated, was a mucky place where bad things happened and people were apt to raise their fists at the slightest provocation. It was also where things, such as ships, were made by men who were the spitting image of Andy Capp. How this came about we knew not and cared less. In pen-pushing, white-collar, butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-your mouth Edinburgh we took it for granted, as you might slave labour. One evening on the news I recall seeing the singer Frankie Vaughan who had offered to come to Glasgow and act as mediator between machete-wielding, warring gangs called the Tongs and the Possil Pigs who were causing mayhem in Easterhouse and elsewhere. I imagined it to be like Haiti but without the sunshine and voodoo.

Could such savages share the same country as us? That it was 1968, when all hell was breaking out across the world, was of no consequence. A few years later, on being offered a job in Glasgow, it took me less time than it would to lick a stamp to turn it down. I was more inclined to go up the Orinoco than the Clyde.

Exactly when I first set foot in what we east coasters – with leaden irony – called the “Dear Green Place” I cannot now be certain. My induction was conducted by the deputy editor of the Glasgow Herald who, as he strode through Rogano to a reserved table, hailed the barman as if he were his brother and barked: “Two pints of lager and let’s have a look at the wine list.” It was at that moment, I suspect, that Glasgow began insidiously to grow on me. The fact that I did not drink lager was neither here nor there.

The city to which I was introduced was raucous, in-your-face, insistent, alive. And it hummed; people bellowed across the street to one another. You could never be alone in Glasgow. Privateness – as the novelist William McIlvanney observed – was not something Glaswegians respected. There was always someone determined to interrupt your conversation or make passing comment. It is not uncommon, for example, for you to be hailed as “wee man” or “big man”, the former being someone taller than average, the latter someone, such as myself, who is vertically challenged. This is Glasgow-style irony. “Hey, big man, what’s that you’ve got on your back – a hair shirt?” What I was meant to understand by this is that I should not walk about with anything less than a broad grin on my “coupon”.

Once, moreover, I was in Horseshoe Bar in Drury Street when, as I splooshed my “hauns” preparatory to leaving the Gents, a fellow toper asked without so much as a by-your-leave if I knew how many wonders in the world there are. I hazarded seven and began to list them. I got as far as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon when I was rudely interrupted. “Naw,” said my interrogator, his lower lip dangling in contempt, “there’s eight.” “Really,” I replied, “what’s the eighth?” “That’s for me to know and you to find out,” he said with a wink, and disappeared before I could quiz him further.

Such encounters added to the frisson whenever I visited Glasgow, which I did more often after I started contributing to The Herald. Lily-livered friends in the east were amazed that I was prepared intrepidly to cross the great divide and advised that I should wear a suit of armour or, failing the availability of that, a flak jacket and pith helmet. Back then, The Herald was based in Albion Street, in the heart of what was to become known as the Merchant City. The HQ was a brutalist block which, in an earlier era, had housed the Scottish Daily Express which, in its pomp – so legend had it – was able in pursuit of a hot story to put more planes in the air than the Luftwaffe. On the ground level was the no-frills Press Bar, or “the staff room” as one wizened hack described it. Once I was bidden there by my editor, a fellow who was so tall that when he stood next to me I couldn’t see where he stopped. As we got down to business one of the worse-for-wear regulars inveigled himself into our colloquy and was decked for his impertinence. The editor carried on talking as if nothing untoward had occurred. When I pointed out that there was a barely conscious fellow on the floor doing an impression of a KO’d boxer about to be transported to A&E, he said: “He shouldn’t have interrupted me when I was talking.”

In the toilet I stumbled over another regular who appeared to have passed out mid-micturition. Concerned for his well-being I informed the barman who gave me a “what am I supposed to do about it” shrug and continued polishing a glass. Throughout the afternoon people – well, men – came and went as their duties demanded. A feted contributor studied his watch, drained his nip, donned his fedora and breezed out the door with the purpose of a Dodge City sheriff determined to bring law and order to mean streets. Apparently, he had a column to write. Less than an hour later he reappeared, having met his deadline, and resumed where he had left off.

In those days, as we entered the 1980s, Glasgow was a byword for decline. Many of the industries from which its grandeur had sprung were on their uppers and most readers of runes predicted its future was bleak. It was a dark, dank, menacing place which the rain, which seemed to start as soon as you reached Harthill, midpoint on the M8 between Glasgow and Edinburgh, did nothing to temper. The news was full of strikes and closures, empty order books and unemployment. The Clyde, which had been as noisy as a nursery, fell quiet as one yard after another shut its gates. The Tories, led by Margaret Thatcher, were in power and impervious to the protests of Scots.

The late 1970s and early 1980s, however, were when Glasgow began to emerge from the Slough of Despond. For this much credit must be given to the arts in general and literature in particular. A formative book was Alan Spence’s Its Colours They Are Fine, which dealt subtly, humourfully and insightfully with sectarianism. Taking his title from the rousing Protestant anthem, The Sash, Spence described a Glasgow childhood in all its richness, roughness and confusion.

“Gypsies ur worse than cathlicks!” says Aleck, a young Protestant boy, in one of Spence’s stories. “Nae kiddin. They havnae a fuckin clue.” The way Aleck speaks (“Mon wull go up tae mah hoose’n clean it aff”), what he eats (sausages and egg and fried bread is a favourite meal), what he reads (Oor Wullie, The Broons, Merry Mac’s Fun Parade), where he plays (waste ground, tenement closes, back streets), all contribute to a sense of otherness, of foreignness. Little wonder therefore, that when visitors arrived in Glasgow they often reacted as if they had travelled deep into the Amazonian jungle and encountered a lost tribe communicating in a tongue they struggled to comprehend and enjoying rituals fathomable only to initiates.

The other book that made me understand Glasgow better and view it with fresh eyes was Alasdair Gray’s Lanark, published in 1981. Its hero, Duncan Thaw, progresses through school to art college, where he encounters a fellow student called Kenneth McAlpin, who has a moustache – a sure sign of social superiority – and lives in Bearsden, which is as alien to Duncan as Marseilles.

On a morning ramble he and McAlpin venture into Cowcaddens to do some drawing. As they gaze across the city, Gray writes: “Travelling patches of sunlight went from ridge to ridge, making a hump of tenements gleam against the dark towers of the city chambers, silhouetting the cupolas of the Royal Infirmary against the tomb-glittering spine of the Necropolis. 'Glasgow is a magnificent city,' said McAlpin. 'Why do we hardly ever notice that?' 'Because nobody imagines living here,’ said Thaw. McAlpin lit a cigarette and said, ‘If you want to explain that I’ll certainly listen’.”

What follows is an impassioned analysis of why Glasgow is not seen as comparable to great cultural honeypots such as Florence, Paris, London and New York, to all of which strangers can relate because they’ve “already visited them in paintings, novels, history books and films”. In contrast, Glasgow is by and large invisible, existing only as a music-hall song – presumably the drunks’ anthem, I Belong to Glasgow – a few bad novels, one of which is doubtless No Mean City, which first appeared in 1935 and which has tarred Glasgow’s reputation ever since, such is the difficulty in erasing a stereotype or righting a wrong. “What is Glasgow to most of us?” continues Thaw/Gray. “A house, a place we work, a football park or golf course, some pubs and connecting streets. That’s all. No, I’m wrong, there’s also the cinema and library.”

What Gray did in his remarkable, game-changing novel was make me re-evaluate my view of Glasgow. Like Lanark’s protagonist I began to immerse myself in the city; flaneuring is what I call it, to give such idle wandering a justification. I stroll up and down the river, crossing bridges, eavesdropping in cafes, engaging locals in chit-chat. Glasgow’s history is etched on the faces and gaits of its inhabitants, in the names of its streets and buildings, the Cranstons and Mackintoshes, Glassfords and Hutchesons. From High Street – for hundreds of years the spine of the old city – I walk the length of Ingram Street towards the Gallery of Modern Art. Then it’s up Buchanan Street and on to Sauchiehall Street, across the torrential M8 and into the Mitchell Library for momentary respite. Thereafter I usually veer in the direction of the Kelvingrove Gallery and Museum where on a recent visit I heard the organist offer a personal tribute to David Bowie, which has become a YouTube sensation. But you don’t need to venture indoors to hear music in Glasgow. Like New Orleans, it is a city full of the kind of people whose feet it is impossible to nail down. Every few hundred yards, it seems, there are buskers to suit every taste, some the musical equivalent of the poet McGonagall, others who ought really to be wowing crowds in the concert hall.

‘Reserve’ is not a word in the Glasgow lexicon. Neither is ‘embarrassment’. It is a city of tens of thousands of opinions, of tall tale tellers, inveterate anecdotalists and soap box orators. You don’t need to go to the theatre to be entertained in Glasgow; all you need do is step on to the street. Everybody wants to perform, to show that but for a twist of fate they too could have been a Chic Murray or Stanley Baxter or Billy Connolly. Indeed, when Connolly was at the peak of his fame there was a poster that used to hang in the People’s Palace, which revealed that 74 per cent of the population of Glasgow thought that they could be funnier than the Big Yin given a chance, while 17 per cent believed they were already funnier than him. Meanwhile, the remaining nine per cent thought they were Billy Connolly. Such is the essence of Glasgow.

Glasgow: The Autobiography, edited by Alan Taylor, is published by Birlinn at £17.99

FIVE OF THE BEST

The Mitchell Library

Modesty is not a Glaswegian trait as is apparent on even casual acquaintance with its public buildings. The Mitchell, which towers over the turmoil of the M8, is to public libraries what the Taj Mahal is to mausoleums. The original donor, a tobacco manufacturer called Stephen Mitchell, insisted that books “on all subjects not immoral” should be admitted to the library’s stock.

The Horseshoe Bar

Based in Drury Street Lane betwixt Central and Queen Street stations, in days of yore the Horseshoe was where many a stravaiger took on board liquid refreshment before setting off for the hills. Fewer hikers are to be seen in its precincts today though if you fancy a stroll you could always do a few circuits round the bar, which is reputedly the longest of its kind in Europe.

Hutchesons’ Hospital

Named after George Hutcheson of Lambhill and his younger brother, Thomas, the hospital – originally a refuge for elderly men and young scholars – dates back to the 17th century. It was rebuilt early in the 19th century at its present location in Ingram Street in the Merchant City. Over the years its purpose has changed; it is currently a restaurant and looks as sumptuous as an uncut wedding cake.

Glasgow School of Art

When in 2014 fire destroyed much of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s masterpiece there was international weeping and wailing, and quite rightly so. As anyone who has had the privilege to study in it will attest, the “Mac” is the kind of building that shames so many dismal others, especially those concerned with education. Without it Glasgow is diminished – which is why its resurrection is so essential.

Central Station

Whether Glaswegians are coming or going cathedral-like Central Station occupies a special place in their hearts. It was immediately outside it, for instance, that Will Fyffe is believed to have happened upon the inspiration for his lachrymose ditty, I Belong To Glasgow. Beneath the station, it was long supposed, there was a Scottish Pompeii but this urban myth has yet to be tested by the BBC’s Time Team.