Jack McLean's
week
SUNDAY: There is a lot of music going on in Glasgow's pubs these days; there always was, of course. It goes largely unnoticed by arts councils and the like because the grandees involved don't go
to such proletarian institutions. Today I found myself in 1901, a smart pub/
restaurant on Glasgow's south side, and listening to a very nice little quintet
fronted by two old stalwarts of the Scottish jazz scene, Bobby Deans and George McGowan, both of whom, of course, are big-band leaders. They've been around a long time. I wrote about both of them and their respective swing orchestras back in the seventies.
Bobby Deans, son of the legendary
saxophonist Micky Deans, led a splendid troupe at the old Amphora, while George gigged all over Glasgow. Bill Fanning had his boys at the old Communist Party-run Star Club. The personnel of all of these were, and thankfully remain, interchangeable. It says much for these dedicated musicians (they have to be dedicated because they earn sod all out of actual
playing), that we have had over a quarter of a century's worth of jazz out of them.
A chum, young Roz McCue, a lady who trained like many others with Fiona
Duncan, once of the famed Clyde Valley Stompers, contributed a fine rendition of Paper Moon, with considerable aplomb. To be frank, this is music of which I approve but don't much like, thinking it belonging to an era which chaps like me thought we had largely swept away back in the rock'n'roll days. Jazzers still disapprove of R&B fellows, but we blues chaps can put up with that. After all, we can still share a stage with the old fellows before we blow them off it.
MONDAY: Bump into Jimmy ''Earl'' Haig, a film producer who long left these shores to set up business in the Far East. He tells me that he's here to do a short on Burns Night. He'll have it wrapped up by Friday and has a crew of three with him. I end up doing a spot for him for no fee save several large Macallans. At the end of the interview, I note that Earl is sporting about a zillion grands' worth of Rolex. The result, no doubt, of getting people like me for next to nothing. Och, good luck to him.
TUESDAY: Peter Mandelson has got himself in a wee bit bother. I hardly knew him because I was at the fag end of my days as a student revolutionary when he first came on the student politics scene. My brother knew him well. He tells me that back then the Prince of Darkness was so extravagantly gay that he was known to fellow NUS chaps as, not ''Mandy'', but ''Amanda''. I think it says much for our present climate, and even, dare I say it, for the present government, that we no longer discriminate against people because of their sexual orientation. Now, thank heavens, we just discriminate against liars.
WEDNESDAY: Today is the Chinese new year. It's the year of the Snake. I spend the new year in perhaps the best Chinese restaurant in Scotland, the Peking Inn in Glasgow's Hope Street, as the guest of the owner, Gerry Wan. There were about 80 courses, each better than the other. My companion, an astoundingly beautiful Lewis girl called Christina, who possesses the sort of svelte figure girls kill for,
out-eats everybody.
Every time people raise their eyebrows when I take Christina (or her identical twin sister, Ann) out in public on the basis of ''how can a wee baldy idjit get his clutches on such lovely young girls'', I have to laugh. They're my god-daughters.
A fellow diner, Chong, a smashing chap originally from Malaysia, who trained as a graphic designer at Glasgow School of Art, tells me that the Chinese years are: the Rat, the Ox, the Tiger, the Rabbit, the Dragon, the Snake, the Horse, the Goat, The Monkey, The Rooster, The Dog, and The Pig. Chong informs me that I am a Goat. This cannot be so. A note on those born in the year of the Goat claims that ''their generous and shy nature makes their friends pander to their whims . . . '' Aye, that'll be right.
THURSDAY: Burns Night. Is there no end to this rout of pleasure? This was in the magnificently baronial Sherbrooke Castle in Dumbreck, a secluded south-side suburb in which all the houses look as though they are owned by William Randolph Hearst. For once, I am not speaking though I do play the moothie. Dougie Donnelly was one of the guest speakers and was awfy good, but he had to follow one of the best speakers I have ever heard, Willie Allan, the former Scottish rugby international. Wur ain Tom Shields was there.
Willie's speech (he made two, actually, because he was called back for an encore) is going to keep Mr Shield's Diary in
stories for years.
FRIDAY: One thing there seems to be no end to is the furore over the proposed merger of two posh Glasgow schools. (I know: folk from Edinburgh are surprised to discover such things exist among
the Weegies.) Encounter a chum in
Heraghty's Bar who has just been to a meeting of the Laurel Park parents. His daughter doesn't want to go to Hutchie on the basis that ''their uniform's crap''. This seems to me the most sensible objection of all. Point out to my pal that if he can afford such school fees he can afford me a large whisky. He says it is the other way round. I stump up. Anyway, both of us are ex-Allan Glen's wurselves. Our uniform was crap, too.
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