If you fancy a fine pint of craft beer, this joint will make you Glad all over

Pub Spy has long had a fascination with the former lives of drinking dens.

It stems from a childhood memory, when my bar manager dad once put optics in the garden shed and turned it into a fully functioning bar – free, of course – for a barbeque.

Perhaps the favourite up to now is the former subterranean Victorian toilet in Manchester which has since been converted into a quirky dive bar.

But nestling on the south side of Glasgow, on the site of a former laser quest – the game where kids (and adults) run around darkened spaces firing guns at sensors strapped to their chest – is one of the best venues for a pint in this corner of the country.

The Glad Cafe is undeniably a hipster joint.

Its colourful interior design is par t ly put together f rom reclaimed wood, off- cuts from sign makers.

The seats are a jumble – the sort of thing you imagine your parents sitting on when they went to school in Nissen huts and old church pews given an afterlife.

There’s a pulley with old teatowels hanging in the corner above a giant double fridge groaning with every craft beer under the sun.

And with it, the implicit trust that customers won’t take them and walk out the door but rather present them at the bar to be opened and paid for. They’re that civil in these parts.

The Glad faced closure earlier this year after it was hit with a whopping £ 40,000 bi l l for building repairs but so wellloved is this artsy enclave – which manages to be a coffee shop, restaurant, gig venue, art gallery and night-time boozer all in one – that it was saved by local donations, and charity gigs by Deacon Blue and Arab Strap’s Aidan Moffat.

It’s also a social enterprise, and puts profits into teaching disadvantaged local kids music, among other things.

But when all’s said and done, Pub Spy is here for the beer.

And this is one of the best craft beer selections anywhere in the city, both on tap and in the fridge. Be warned, though – the menu, from partners Hen of the Woods – is a few eggs short of vegan, so expect jackfruit curry not pie and beans.

Inspired by the Carson McCullers book The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, it’s anything but, and is an offbeat alternative to the mainstream boozing options.

The fact that a Wetherspoons is due to open round the corner, makes it even more of a haven for discerning Glasgow drinkers, who’ve found plenty to be Glad about here.