There is a way to bring life back to Glasgow – if we are brave enough to try it

TRAVEL broadens the behind but it also offers lessons. My two major takeaways from a lifetime of foreign trips can be summarised thus: first, in the event of a fire don’t use the lift and, second, cities have the capacity to be revitalised.

Manhattan and Barcelona stand at the very top of the summit marked: Once a Dump Now An Attraction. The 1970s in both locations were, well, trying for visitors. Times Square was the OK Corral with added attitude and more accurate shooters. To wander off the Ramblas in the bad old days was to head into an urban jungle with predators on every branch.

The transformation of both spots has been wondrous, if not universally lauded. There are, though, cities nearer to home that have shrugged off some of the blows of the past to survive and, indeed, prosper in 2022.

This realisation was audible to this old dodderer at the weekend. It occurred as I walked past the Cavern Club in Liverpool and, of course, heard the Proclaimers.

This area of Liverpool is renowned for hosting partygoers and at 2pm it resembled Sauchiehall Street at midnight in its insatiable swallowing and unsteady gait.

The unmistakable message was that this was the weekend and sobriety was for losers.

This undeniable loser ventured across the road and encountered another lesson.

Albert Docks, one of the most poignant and depressing motifs of Boys From the Blackstuff (and that is a strong statement since Boys was hardly a MGM musical in its lighthearted glitziness and lifeenhancing messaging) is now another wonder.

It hosts apartments, hotels, the Tate, and a Beatles museum. It sits proudly on the water, beckoning the visitor with art and culture. And a big Ferris wheel.

There is still much to be done in Liverpool. A trip out to Anfield underlines the perception that poverty is on the doorstep of

Beatlemania. But the city centre has powerful signs of life.

A dauner under the bright sunshine of a March Saturday produced a stark contrast on my last visit to Sauchiehall Street. Blown by Storm Senga off an open-top bus, I headed for refuge in the heart of the city as the driver basically informed me that it was every grandfather for himself and that he was prepared to go down with his vessel.

So Auld Shug and granddaughter Tess made a break for the city centre.

I have had more uplifting moments during a Powerpoint presentation to accountants on the latest invoicing process for overseas contributors.

Now, more than a million words (and, yes, I’ve counted) have been written about the demise of the city centre and, in particular, Sauchiehall Street. These words have had the same effect on the accelerating disintegration as whoah has on a runaway horse.

But maybe there is a lesson from the Beatles. Liverpool has used the Fab Four as a rallying call.

Not one of the revellers, I swerved or stepped over in the Cavern district was old enough to remember the heyday of John, Paul, George and Ringo. Indeed, their parents were not old enough to recollect the reality of the Merseybeat.

Yet these youngsters had gathered in a dazed reverence induced, no doubt, by the consumption of “shots” but speaking of a good time had by all. The city centre was alive.

Now Glasgow needs no lessons in how to be a party town. But it could do with some help in reviving a city centre only kept breathing in daytime by dogged retailers and a gaggle of pound shops and charity outlets.

There is a genuine poverty about Sauchiehall Street. How to enrich it? How to make it significant beyond low-end shopping and high-end drinking?

This is where the Beatles – and the Proclaimers – come in. There is now space in the central shopping thoroughfare for another development.

It needs bold thinking and, of course, a dollop of money. But how about this? Could space be found to celebrate the music of Scotland?

Is there the creative will to set up a centre that charts the history and influence of such as Alex Harvey, Roddy Frame, Simple Minds, Gerry Rafferty, Annie Lennox and, yes, Lulu. Can there be a museum, too, to the written word? Geez, we invited the modern novel or, at least, Wattie Scott did. And we haven’t done so badly since with Burns, Hogg, Spark, RL, Gray, McIlvanney and a a veritable crime wave of top-class tartan noir.

Is there the possibility of a creative loop beginning at the Kelvingrove, swaggering down Sauchiehall Street, stoating over a bridge to the science museum and the Riverside museum?

Most importantly, is there now an opportunity to bring people back to live in the city centre?

How about a low-rent quarter? There is space right along Sauchiehall Street. It should be filled with people. Artists should be encouraged to take up this accommodation and there would be a creative hub to the city.

There would be both a soul and a heartbeat to an area that only comes alive when the revellers come out to play. The alternative is simply awful: a hollow, dispiriting city that ultimately dies. We must, and can do better.

But how to fund this magical mystery tour? Simple. Just shake the magical money tree. We did it for the bankers. We must find the will to do it for a city.