Taggart has got nothing on a real Friday night in Glasgow

Manning up a two-cop patrol car on a shift of ten officers in the early-nineties was not fit for TV viewing, writes Jim Duffy

The east end of Glasgow was probably one of the best places to train as a rookie cop in the early nineties.

I loved the buzz of the place. The grittiness and dampness that always seemed to be in the air. And driving into London Road Police Office for a Friday night shift was one of the most exhilarating feelings I have experienced.

No Juliet Bravo or The Bill fiction here. Not even Taggart or Line of Duty. No, manning up a two-cop patrol car on a shift of ten cops was not for TV viewing, the PC brigade or the faint-hearted.

Sitting in an east end muster room with nine other male cops waiting for the gaffers to come in was always an interesting time. The battle-hardened guys did all the talking.

As a probationer with less than two years’ service under my belt, my role was to watch and listen. A bit like the Strathclyde Police motto at that time that was emblazoned on my cap badge: Semper Vigilo. Opening one’s young gob and upsetting the wrong guy could make for an uncomfortable four-letter, five-letter and six-letter tirade of profanity that would make Frankie Boyle blush.

In fact, the language used in a Glasgow muster room was worse than used by some folks who got “lifted” for it two hours later. It was just their way. Fifteen years of hard policing, sectarian walks, arriving at brutal serious assaults and having to deal with pub rammies.

Muster over, we would collect our radios, have a quick chinwag with the controllers downstairs and head out to our “Pandas”. Of course, the livery was blue, black and white, so the old panda meme was not all that up to date.

Already the radio would be going ten to the dozen with petty disturbance calls. Usually low-level stuff at this time of night, a couple of hours before midnight. That is when it got really juicy.

By then, the bevvy had kicked in and a different reality was shining through in the minds of men in pubs and clubs. Leaving the security of the electric gates we ventured out, all knowing that we would be back within a couple of hours with a “body” or, in today’s PC language, a prisoner.

On leaving London Road copshop, there was a plethora of choices on where to head. One could go south to Dalmarnock. Not much to see, just tenements and high-rise blocks. It sat in no man’s land between Rutherglen and Bridgeton. A decent set of “neds”, but they liked to stay in their one fiefdom, rarely venturing out, even when full of Buckfast.

Then there was Bridgeton itself. Bristling with pubs with Union Jacks proudly hanging on flagpoles letting everyone know that this was a “Rangers” area. A preferred hunting ground for cops, there was plenty of action here on a nightshift.

Or perhaps, head down to Glasgow Cross and the Barras area, with even more pubs, this time with Irish Tricolours hanging outside. This is where Glasgow city centre met the East End. Always a flashpoint for violence on the nightshift.

More fast food shops and places where drunk folks could get themselves into trouble. And finally, one could drive north to Dennistoun. Pubs, eateries, students, high-rise flats, council tenements sitting one street away from posh Victorian townhouses. Dennis