Brace yourselves: we’re going on a sub crawl. The aim, as you know, is to buy a ticket for the Glasgow subway and get off at every stop to have a drink at a pub. Some people do it in fancy dress. Some have a list of forfeits they have to perform. And some, let’s be honest, never make it to the end. It’s good fun. It’s a laugh. It’s Glasgow.
But the sub crawl we’ll be doing, I’m afraid to say, will not involve alcoholic beverages: we’ll be doing it stone-cold sober because there’s a serious purpose. The number of pubs in Scotland is declining. Habits are changing. For a lot of pubs, life’s getting harder and some aren’t going to make it. So on this sub crawl, we’ll be getting off and talking to the publicans, the locals and the regulars to discover what’s going on with pubs. First stop: Kinning Park.
Kinning Park: The Bellrock
‘Then the seizures started’
I’m just in the door and Diane Bell, singer, landlady and figurehead of The Bellrock, breaks off from the karaoke to give me a welcome hug. “We give a lot of love and a lot of hugs in here,” she says. The Bellrock also has a unique selling point in this part of Glasgow, near Ibrox, where things can occasionally get a bit rowdy and a bit blokey: all the staff are female. The pub is all-women.
“The all-women thing happened by accident,” says Diane, who's 51 and used to sing in pubs before she took on the Bellrock. “But I think women can deal with men better. We get more respect.”
Diane’s sister, Debbie Bell, 47, who runs the pub day-to-day, agrees. “I do the doors on football days,” she says. “And I know all the chief inspectors and the police constables and they say ‘we leave you to it’. They have so much respect for us being all-female.”
But the sisters admit running the pub can be stressful. The sub crawl is a big earner, but when the local subway station was closed during the renovations last year, they lost thousands. They’re also still paying back the loan they took during the pandemic. And Diane has had ill health as well. I wonder if the worry of the pub made it worse.
“I don’t want to say yes,” she says, “but I was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm, and another one, and another one, and I’ve now had four. Then the seizures started and they were only happening when the pub was really busy.”
But the thing about the Bellrock is yes, the pub can be a cause for concern and Diane sometimes wonders if they should carry on, but it’s also her cure, it makes her happy. She introduces me to the crowd of gay guys that come in every week and another group that call themselves the Grumpy Old Men Club and have the T-shirts to prove it. “This isn’t a pub,” says Diane, before she rejoins the karaoke. “It’s a hub. A community hub.”
Govan: Brechin’s Bar
‘The generation coming up were junkies’
The second stop is one of the oldest pubs in Glasgow – “Est. 1798” says the sign – and it doesn’t take long for the regulars to tell me what it used to be like.
Sitting by the bar is 68-year-old Thomas Murray. “On Fair Friday, the shipyards would empty and you couldn’t get into any pub in Govan,” he says. “They were packed out.” William Kerr agrees; he’s been drinking in here since he was 20 (nearly 40 years ago). “Gone are the days when you owned a pub and made yourself a right few quid,” he says. “If you’ve got a pub now: you’re just working for a wage.”
Another of the regulars, 71-year-old John Hanlon knows how true that is. He used to own four pubs, including one in Govan, and says the decline started 10 years ago.
“My pubs were all in excess of £10,000 a week turnover,” he says. “Now, one of the same pubs is doing £2,000. And the other three I owned have turned into a bookies, a shoe shop and a hairdresser.”
I ask why it’s happened and he says changing habits, including some people preferring drugs to alcohol. “It’s the decline of people going out. In my pub in Govan, 60 pensioners would come in at 10 in the morning and there’d be dominos, cards, darts, and we had 200 pints on the bar for welders coming out at lunchtime. Then the pensioners died off and the generation coming up were just junkies.”
John isn’t optimistic either about any kind of turnaround, and is especially worried about the increase in employers’ national insurance. “That’s going to screw it for pubs,” he says. “See if you took all the people in the four pubs around here and brought them into one pub, it still wouldn’t be busy,” he says. Brechin’s Bar. Est 1798. How much longer will it be around?
Partick: Deoch an Dorus
‘I had a lot of problems in my life’
There was a time when Deoch an Dorus was facing some of the same problems as Brechin’s. “It was a working men’s pub without any working men in it,” says the boss Jeannie Kelly. It was also a Rangers pub and when Jeannie took over in 2012, she was determined to change things.
“We closed it down for a couple of months, then focused for the first year on getting the clientele we wanted,” she says. “It you want to support your football team by singing and shouting and calling the other team names, you don’t come here,” she says. “We are not a Rangers pub.”
The other big change was food: they introduced a new menu and it’s worked for them (bestseller: steak pie). One of the kitchen team is 25-year-old Nicholas Arseniu from Pennsylvania, who says the pub culture in Scotland was a bit of a culture shock (he’s used to it now). Also on the team is 46-year-old Davie Connelly, who’s a local lad so has plenty of experience of pubs and drinking, some not so happy.
Davie says bit by bit, the drinking, and the drugs, took over. “I had a lot of problems in my life,” he says. “I kept on working and turning up on time, but I was a functioning alcoholic. I was here, but my head wasn’t.”
Eventually, something switched and with the help of his colleagues he went to Alcoholics Anonymous and Cocaine Anonymous. I ask if it’s hard for a recovering addict to work in a pub, but no. “I have great people around me, strong people. My ex-wife and my kids got me through the first stage, then I broke down to Jeannie and said I’ve had enough and we took it from there.”
After showing me round the kitchen, Davie tells me he’s one year and 18 days sober, and says he worries about the youngsters, especially with the drugs. But Jeannie thinks they’ve changed. “The younger ones, there’s not half as much of the pub culture as there was when I was young.” And it makes her uncertain about the future of pubs. “A lot of the small pubs will go,” she says. “It’s a shame.”
Kevinhall: Bag O’Nails
‘People are going sober’
The next stop on the crawl is handy because it might provide a few more answers on what’s going on with young people and pubs: the manager is Josie Dunlop and she’s 22. She started here when she moved from Fife four years ago and realised she preferred working in pubs to studying psychology.
So what’s going on with young people? “A lot less alcohol,” she says. “People are going sober. It was funny, there was one day I noticed it particularly: all these guys were in and instead of drinking pints they were drinking non-alcoholic beers. It’s crazy. It’s health I think. People are coming out, they’re just choosing not to have alcohol. It’s a big social change.”
The other factor is money. “Everybody’s skint,” she says. So the key is to think of reasons to get them in and make it easier. Monday is quiz night. There’s also live music three days a week and an open-mic night (“we avoid karaoke; it can go the wrong way”). Social media is also a thing and Josie has just introduced QR codes on the tables so you can sit there and order through your phone. No need to get up and go to the bar ever again. It might just work.
Hillhead: The Aragon
‘You go and buy cheap beer – who’s going to stop you?
Stop number five and the owner of The Aragon, Julie Hattie, is talking trends. Gin (fading). Rum (on a comeback). Splitting the G (get a life). She’s also noticed the thing with non-alcoholic drinks (she now has a fridge full of them). “Twenty five years ago, I’d have been like: what? But I see that going up.”
Julie knows what she’s talking about because she’s worked in the trade since the 1980s and she’s worried about the future of some pubs. One thing that’s happening a lot is churn – pubs constantly changing hands – but the other issue is pubs that find themselves in the wrong location. The Aragon is lucky, it’s on Byres Road, but for pubs in more deprived parts the future is less certain. “I can understand why they’re shutting,” says Julie, “because unfortunately the beer price per keg is the same for us all.”
Julie is also not a fan of the way governments have handled the trade. The first issue for her was the smoking ban – a lot of her regulars went home and never came back – but Julie also thinks governments who want to tackle Scotland’s problem drinking have got the wrong target. “In here, you’ve got us saying ‘no, you’ve had enough, I’m cutting you off’. But you go into a supermarket to buy cheap beer and vodka and wine, who’s to tell you to stop?”
Before I go, we talk trends again – future trends. Julie says she’s seen amazing automatic beer pumps in the US that fill upwards using glasses with valves in the bottom and thinks it won’t be long before we get them over here. “But it’ll have a knock-on effect on jobs,” she says. “In 20 years, it’s all going to be completely different.”
Kelvinbridge: Kitty O’Shea’s
‘Last orders is dead’
Now here’s a pub Glaswegians with slightly shady pasts will know because it used to be Clatty Pats, the nightclub of famous/infamous memory. It’s now part of a small chain of pubs with an Irish theme but like a lot of pubs in Glasgow these days, it goes light on the football thing. “Don’t get me wrong,” says manager Daniel Slattery, “on derby day, you know which team is coming here. But this isn’t a Celtic pub.”
The crowd in tonight, like most nights, is young and studenty, but that isn’t the source of money it used to be. I speak to some of the young ones and they tell me there’s less of a drinking culture. More people do coffee instead. They still have friends who get rat-arsed but there’s a culture of wellness. And drinking is more expensive. Going out is a treat. They’re here tonight because there’s a quiz.
The man in charge is Mackenzie Watson, who does pub quizzes full-time. He does six a week, he says, and makes £1,400 a week, so it’s good for him and for the pubs as well. “You have to offer something to people so they’ll come, especially during the week,” he says. “We’re even coming to the point now where Fridays are no longer busy. So you have to offer something: maybe it’s a cheap dinner, or a quiz; otherwise, it’s a struggle.”
Daniel, the 35-year-old manager, has seen how things have changed. “When I was 18, last orders was: bell goes, you go to the bar and carry as many pints as you can. Nowadays last orders is dead.”
He thinks part of the explanation is the pandemic. “Covid happened and if you were 17, 18, 19, you didn’t go through the rite of passage. So they don’t drink as much. And they expect table service. And they don’t know how to behave at the bar. They stood in lines in supermarkets, they stood in line to get jags, so they stand in line at the bar.” Maybe the generation that comes after them will be different.
St George’s Cross: The Royalty
‘It's hard at the moment, very hard’
Right, we’re half-way round the sub crawl now and we’re in Maryhill at The Royalty where the landlord Robert Somerville is telling me about the pubs there used to be in the area: about 30 in all he thinks. Not anymore. He reels off the ones that have gone, or are going, or are likely to go. One of the issues, he says, is the local population has changed and the workers and labourers that drank in the pubs have gone. “It’s hard at the moment,” he says, “very hard.”
The biggest issue as far Robert is concerned is the hurdles and costs that government, national and local, put in the way of publicans and a particular problem is the cap on the number of taxis in Glasgow. In the old days, he says, he used to struggle to get the punters out the door at closing time; now they’re phoning their cabs at 10.30 to make sure they get home.
Then there are the daily costs, all going up. Electricity. Employers’ national insurance. Business rates. “The SNP have never really helped the hospitality industry,” says Robert. “Glasgow council do nothing for us. I think there’s a bit of an anti-drink culture.”
The other big cost – and it’s something that comes up a lot – is TV subscriptions. “The biggest cost to all pubs is Sky TV, it’s a total rip-off. I’m £2,000 a month and that’s standard for a bar but I couldn’t do without it – if you don’t have Sky, you don’t have your football. And that’s only Sky: it’s just under £10,000 a year for TNT, which shows all the European games. For three channels, I was £37,000 last year. It’s about 15-20 per cent of my revenue, and revenues are down.”
Robert says he’s tried various ideas to turn things around: he’s tried to do food but to do it properly he’d have to invest in a kitchen which is expensive. He’s negotiated an allowance from the brewery so he can keep prices down. And he’s toned down a lot of the Rangers décor and memorabilia, although some of his regulars didn’t like it, and some went elsewhere. Robert is firm though. “I’m Rangers, I’m not sectarian and that’s important.”
Sadly, he’s thinks the pubs that have disappeared from Maryhill aren’t coming back. Before I visit The Royalty, I phone The Scottish Licensed Trade Association and ask them for the latest figures on pub closures and they tell me it’s more than 200 in Scotland in the last five years and Robert thinks it’s a trend that will continue. He’s doing his best, but he’s not confident, and his prediction is clear: “More pubs will be shutting down.”
Cowcaddens: MacConnells
‘There isn’t much to come into the city centre for’
Well, this is embarrassing. I’m at the next pub on the crawl, MacConnells, and the manager Derek Watson tells me business has dropped off and one of the reasons is The Herald. The Herald used to have its offices down the road from here and a lot of the staff would come into the pub (that’s journalists for you). Then The Herald moved away, then the Job Centre Plus offices did, then Tesco Bank and others, then people started working from home. It’s had a big effect.
In some ways, you’d think MacConnells would still have some advantages. It’s right opposite the Theatre Royal for one and that does bring people in. “The theatre is good for us if there are good shows on,” says Derek. He makes sure the side of the pub nearest the theatre is nice and neutral and reserves the bar and lounge at the back for his Celtic-supporting regulars.
But the big problem for MacConnells is the one a lot of businesses in Glasgow are facing: the state of the city centre. “There doesn’t seem to be much to come into the city centre for,” says Derek. “I can close at 11pm and head down for the train and Lauder’s is already closed - and that’s Lauder’s. Maybe we need to cater more to the students because there’s going to be a hell of a lot more students. But I feel like I’ve tried an awful lot over the years.”
Derek also mentions another phenomenon that’s damaging pubs and he’s not the first or the last: the man cave. During lockdown, a lot of guys who were missing the pub built their own versions at home and ironically, it’s ended up damaging the places they loved so much. “See the number of customers who have makeshift bars in their houses and gardens,” says Derek. They used to come to MacConnells; now they’re hanging out in their own pubs instead.
Buchanan Street: The Counting House
‘We’ve been good for the pub trade’
We’re in a Wetherspoons for this stop so it immediately feels different. The Counting House was the chain’s first Scottish pub and is still the flagship (it employs an astonishing 200 people). The buying power of the company also means it can negotiate competitive deals so it has the cheapest beer in town. And it’s busy. Always busy.
The 47-year-old manager Michael Murphy, who’s been working for the chain for 25 years, knows there are some folk who are a bit sniffy about Spoons, but he shows me the craft beer menu and points out that The Counting House has been in the Good Beer Guide for three years in a row. He also thinks a giant like Wetherspoon’s shouldn’t be seen as a threat to the small guys.
“I would say we’ve been good for the pub trade,” he says. “I don’t know if it’s just a media thing and the criticism filters down so that’s what people think. But people wouldn’t come in if they didn’t like it.”
Michael also believes The Counting House helps encourage other business in the local area, including other pubs. “We’re encouraging people going out,” he says. “The places round about here, I don’t see them as competition, it’s all helping the area. People will come here and go somewhere else. People need to see the bigger picture. The more places that are open here, the better it is for everybody.”
Before I go, he wants to show me the pub’s most unique feature. The Counting House used to be a bank and until 2018 its safe was securely locked up and no one knew what was inside. So they got a safecracker in who said he could open it in three hours (it took him ten). Sadly, the only thing they found was an old table (no money). But you can now sit in there and have a beer, which is cool.
St Enoch: MacSorley’s
“If I didn’t have music, I’d have nothing’
It’s our third-last stop and there’s no doubt what this pub is all about. Lewis Capaldi’s played here. And KT Tunstall. Paolo Nutini has been in for a few beers, and Limp Bizkit. And the stage takes pride of place in the middle of the pub. MacSorley’s is all about the music.
The pub is run by mother and son Mary and Brandon Doherty. They work together and live together and handle it by doing different shifts. “I do days and he does nights,” says Mary. “And we clash in between!” But it works well. The young team also see Mary as a bit of a mother hen, although a tough one when necessary. “I got a mother’s day card from all the staff and I was nearly crying,” she says.
Both Mary and Brandon agree the key to their success has been the music. They have challenges like most pubs – the rundown state of the streets round about being one of them – but they have live bands on throughout the week and it works. “If I didn’t have music, I’d have nothing,” says Mary.
The sort of music they play – a lot of rock – also works with the changing patterns of the punters. “We get a lot of middle-aged people,” says Mary, “and they want to come in the afternoon and go home early. The average age here is 40/50/60 because they’re into their rock and their music. But they want to go home about 9.”
Mary and Brandon give me a quick tour of the place. They point out the beautiful sculpted windows, which the original MacSorley brought in from Atlanta in the 1890s. And they introduce me to Phil, the automated skeleton who guards the stage. Mary presses a hidden button and he springs into life. Guitar in hand, eyes glowing, he’s ready to rock.
Bridge Street: The Laurieston
‘It’s not broken so why change it?’
The walls of this fine old pub tell its story. There’s a sign that says “no ladies supplied in this bar” which is from the old days of working men’s pubs. There’s a portrait of the landlord’s father and uncle, who ran the place for years. And there are pictures of some of the famous names who’ve been here. Including Sooty and Sweep no less. I’m sold.
There’s also a good chance you’ve seen the unique interior of The Laurieston, untouched since the 80s, even if you haven’t been here because many TV shows have filmed in the place: Rebus, Succession, and Taggart. It’s helped pull in a conspicuously young and trendy crowd.
Joseph Clancy, who runs The Laurieston, says the formula works. His family sold up last year, but Joseph’s staying on and the new owners have promised: no changes, which makes it rare in the pub world. Almost every other pub I’ve been to is considering change of one sort or another, or has been forced into it. But not The Laurieston. “It’s not broken,” says Joseph. “So why change it?”
Some of the issues they face are the same. The older drinkers dying off. The younger ones having no money (“we do get young people who’ll nurse a pint”). And the state of the street outside is shocking. But the formula works. Décor some would call old, some would call cool. Simple, non-fancy food from the original pie oven from the 1960s. And something no other pub has (and you’ll just need to go along and sample it for yourself to find out): the Guinness middle tap.
Shields Road: The Viceroy
‘Sometimes I feel like an unpaid collector of taxes’
So that’s it then. We’re reached the last stop of the tour and it’s The Viceroy, owned and run by mother and son Elaine and Scott Derrick. I sit and chat to them in the lounge and they tell me that, like a lot of the other pubs I’ve visited, the pandemic was a big turning point.
“The Scottish Government never really helped pubs,” says Elaine. “Businesses in England got the full £25,000 grant but in Scotland it was based on your rateable value which meant equivalent businesses were getting less help in Scotland.” Elaine and Scott’s answer was to create a beer garden out the back to maximise custom. “We wouldn’t have survived if we hadn’t done it,” says Elaine.
The result was a colourful outdoor space that’s a glorious sun-trap. The walls are covered in a riot of technicolour monkeys, butterflies and birds created by the street artist Rogue Oner, who also painted the giant woman with a beer glass at the back of the pub that’s become a bit of an icon on the street. It’s attracted visitors from all the world: Argentina, Colombia, China, New York, you name it.
Elaine says in some ways they had no choice. “You cannot stay the way you were,” she says. “You need a draw.” Scott’s also attracting new customers with one of the best ranges of beers I’ve seen (and a very cool CO2 glass cooler). But like other young folk, Scott, who’s 27, knows things are changing. “You hear about some student unions taking their bars out completely,” he says.
The Viceroy also faces most of the hurdles the other pubs have mentioned. Like the cost of heating. And the cost of the satellite telly for sports. And the UK and local government taxes. “Sometimes,” says Elaine, “I feel like an unpaid collector of taxes for the government.”
But making The Viceroy work is profoundly personal for Elaine and Scott. The pub was originally run by Elaine’s husband and Scott’s dad, Peter Derrick. But in 2019, while dealing with a man who’d followed tourists into the pub and was being aggressive, Peter suffered a cardiac arrest and died. “It was horrific,” says Elaine, “Ninety-nine per cent of the public are fabulous but the guy that caused the trouble, he changed the way our lives have gone.”
What happened next was that Scott, who was developing a career as pro rugby player, took over the running of the pub with his mum when he was just 21. It was a massive change for everybody, but the family also raised money for defibrillators to try and stop what happened to Peter happening to anybody else. Their defibs are now in place all over the country and are strategically placed near football stadiums, sports facilities and nightclubs. “When something bad happens,” says Elaine, “you’ve got to try and make something good.”
And so I say cheerio to Elaine and Scott and that’s the end of the sub crawl. I feel like I’ve been to every type of pub: the big chain, the small independent, the working men’s boozer, the studenty bar, the Rangers pub, the Celtic pub. And I must say: I’m worried. Some of it’s down to trends that look inevitable, like changing populations and habits. But some of it’s made worse by stuff we could change, like the state of the centre of Glasgow and high rates of tax. I’m looking at the list of the pubs I’ve visited and wonder what would happen if I did the sub crawl again in 10 years’ time, or even five. How many of the pubs I’ve visited will still be around?
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