When Glasgow was nominated in 1986 as European Capital of Culture for 1990, comedian Billy Connolly raised a cheer. His sentiments were felt by many, who were not only keen to see Glasgow recognized for its merits, but wanted to score a point in the city’s long-standing rivalry with the capital, which had grown keener since the advent of the Edinburgh Festival.
An actor friend of mine told me once of how he returned home to Glasgow after some success on the London stage and decided to visit the Italian cafe´ where he frittered away his youth. The owner, Tony, was still there, hidden behind the whooshing and grinding cappuccino machine. He gave my friend a warm welcome and, drying his hands with his ever-present tea towel, asked him what he thought of the place. Had it changed much while he had been away pursuing fame?
My friend cast an eye around the sea of Fablon and Formica and found it much the same. There was one obvious addition, though: a horrendous painting covering one wall, in gaudy colours unknown in nature, depicting a shortbread-tin Highland scene, a loch with mountains, complete with unlikely looking wildlife – eagles, deer, badgers, pheasant and haggis. Below the painting sat the cafe´’s only other customer, a dishevelled individual, his head in the soup, snoring and bubbling furiously between mumbled swear words.
The owner then asked my friend the question he had been dreading. Pointing to the garish wall, Tony said, ‘Well, what do you think of my muriel?’ The best response my friend could manage was a blurted, ‘Eh it’s very nice, Tony.’ No sooner had the words left his lying lips than the soup drinker in the corner uttered his judgement: ‘Very nice, ye say? Very nice? Ye call that a muriel? Christ, Venus de Milo would turn in his grave if he’d seen that!’
Thus goes the best piece of artistic criticism I have ever heard; a thumping piece of honesty which the Sunday review pages would do well to emulate. Of course, it was uttered in the midst of that cultural centre of Western civilization, Glasgow. What is this I hear you say in the cultural deserts of London, Birmingham, Bristol and Manchester – tish, bah, pooh, bosh and figs?
The reason for my bout of civic pride in my old home town is that, in an unusual display of wisdom, Richard Luce, the arts minister, has nominated Glasgow as a centre of cultural excellence, and not before time.
For too long Glasgow has languished under the shadow of Edinburgh. In the minds of those who award prizes and tributes to cities and the like, Edinburgh has held a sort of franchise on the beauty department of Scotland’s cultural heritage; a fact that has caused a great deal of sand to lodge in the collective Glasgow craw.
Glasgow, this city of 70 (yes, 70) parks and open spaces, has long resented its image as the blackspot of Europe. For many years it has been a victim of documentary film-makers who, when short of evidence of marauding gangs terrorizing the wide-eyed and innocent populace, were not above slipping some unemployed youths a couple of bob to impersonate the same.
To deny Glasgow’s violent past would, of course, be less than sensible. However, it seems to me the right approach would be to build on the more positive side of Glasgow’s character.
Glasgow scored a cultural dropkick a few years ago when it refurbished the Theatre Royal – a great Victorian music hall which had been sliced up, groaning all the way, into a television studio eventually wrecked by fire – and made it the home of Scottish Opera. In a world that seems obsessed with building car parks and high-rise office blocks this came as a real shock …
My own love of things cultural arises from a mistake of geography, really. I was born and spent my formative years in Partick, most famous I suppose for Partick Thistle, a football team of somewhat mixed fortunes – an English friend once remarked on hearing the result Partick Thistle 2, Motherwell 1: ‘My goodness, I always thought that they were called Partick Thistle Nil’.
At the front of Kelvingrove Park in Partick is the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, where, on many a Sunday, my sister Flo and I would go for an afternoon’s cultural absorption and a slide on the highly polished floor.
Some talented buyer in the Glasgow council had purchased Salvador Dali’s Christ of St John of the Cross, causing quite a furore at the time. I have always been grateful to that person, for I spent many happy hours looking at that painting. It has instilled in me a love of Salvador Dali and, more important, surrealism in art and in life in general that has pleased and fortified me many times in my travels.
As a special treat, I would be taken every couple of years to the People’s Palace, a truly great folk museum at Glasgow Green. This, the most alive museum I have experienced, is dedicated to Glasgow’s history and life-style, without denying the humour of the place. It suffers greatly at the hands of the press and the less enlightened members of the council because of the shadow thrown over it by its wealthier cousin, the Burrell Collection, affluently housed in Pollok Estate.
Personally, I preferred the Burrell Collection when it was in boxes in various warehouses, disused schools, and abandoned churches. My father would point out one of these schools solemnly. ‘That building holds treasures,’ he would say, and I would stare at the sooty, grimy place, suitably impressed.
The culture of my Glasgow is a living, working, singing and laughing culture. It is a culture of a city renowned for toughness and born of adversity. If this type of toughness upsets you, I would advise you to stay clear of Glasgow.
It is a culture that has been fought for and won by dedicated men and women, not always citizens of Glasgow. People like Giles Havergal of the Citizens’ Theatre, John Cunningham and Sandy Goudie in art, Alasdair Gray and Carl MacDougall in literature, Liz Lochhead in poetry, Elspeth King in the museum department, and Sir Alexander Gibson and Bill McCue in music.
My only hope, when an honour has been placed on such richly deserving shoulders, is that the louder and more shrill trumpet-blowers of the Scottish press can be blanketed by the calmer members. The time for trumpet-blowing and naı¨ve pleas for recognition has long gone. If you are lucky enough to have been born there, or smart enough to wish to be there, then the time has come to be quietly pleased.