Let’s raise a can of Red Stripe to a future for Flicks

Flicks in Brechin is getting a new sales push and here’s to that. If only we could bring back its glory days. Roll up the sleeves of your white jacket and pop on those mirror shades, because it’s shameless nostalgia time. Having lived through the ’80s and being cynical and annoying, I love to bait friends by saying it’s the decade that produced nothing of value.

I don’t mean that, because it produced hundreds of great comic books, at least three good films and two good pieces of music but it’s a fun chat, identifying positives in the decade.

One of my favourite memories of the ’80s was arriving at Flicks.

Admittedly, my lack of common sense – or tolerance for alcohol – meant I had few memories of leaving later but arriving was an experience.

Talk your way past the bouncer – easier than a Dundee nightclub because of that long bus journey – and you entered a palace of chrome, carpet, flashing lights and dark corners, filled with the scents of dry ice, hairspray and bad lager.

It was a good business idea, too. Build it and they will come. Build it some distance from a population centre and lay on buses and you add a layer of curiosity and cool. I’m just glad I didn’t live nearby and have to put up with the place.

Now Flicks is for sale, for less than a can of Red Stripe in 1989. You can acquire it for nothing, although of course you’ll need to refurbish the building, which is on the Buildings At Risk Register, and know how to make money from it.

The old idea won’t do, of course. It worked way back when but bussing in boozehounds with backcombed barnets isn’t very 2017.

But, if Flicks stands for anything, it stands for the idea that Scotland’s small communities need entrepreneurs who are creative and willing to take a risk. Flicks worked because it was the right idea at the time, and stopped working because times changed.

I haven’t got the answer for today but I bet somebody does. They just need to step forward and I hope they do.

You entered a place filled with the scents of dry ice, hairspray and bad lager