100 years on, discover the story of the iconic song I Belong To Glasgow
At a train station 100 years ago, music hall maestro and Dundonian Will Fyffe was inspired to write the iconic Glaswegian anthem
My good man, right at this moment, Glasgow belongs to me.
ACENTURY ago, in November 1920, the Scottish music-hall and variety entertainer Will Fyffe was seeing a friend off from Glasgow’s Central Station. As reported in Albert Mackie’s 1973 book, The Scotch Comedians, Fyffe encountered a happily drunk Clydeside workman searching for his train ticket.
The chap proved to be “genial and demonstrative” and was “laying off about Karl Marx and John Barleycorn with equal enthusiasm”.
At some point, either Fyffe or a ticket inspector asked the inebriated gentleman, “Do you belong to Glasgow?” He apparently replied, “No, my good man, I do not. Right at this moment, Glasgow belongs to me.”
Fyffe, who had already made a name for himself with his comedic songs and the remarkable finesse of his character-focused impersonations, was clearly struck by the phrase. It became the climax of his song I Belong To Glasgow, which he wrote soon afterwards and first performed at the Glasgow Pavilion a few weeks later in early 1921 – to almost immediate acclaim.
Indeed, despite the continued inventiveness of his other sketches – Fyffe’s speciality was creating comedic portraits of elderly soldiers, engineers, shepherds and country doctors – the “wee Glesca chap” who “has had one or two too many” quickly became his signature character, and a firm audience-favourite.
Some allege that Fyffe first offered the song to his slightly older contemporary Harry Lauder, who was touring in revue at the time. Lauder is said to have refused the song on the grounds that it promoted excessive consumption of alcohol. His own song Just a Wee Deoch and Doris, argued for much more responsible drinking!
Other writers have cast doubt on the very idea that Fyffe, just a few months from his first top billing at the London Pavilion, would give away such comedy gold. Even if he had, Lauder’s reaction showed the timeliness of the song and its subject matter.
Alcohol was making headlines in Scotland, and the case for a prohibition, restricting the sale and consumption of it for reasons of public morality and health, was being argued.
Earlier that year, Prohibition had become an established fact of life across the United States of America. Scotland’s own temperance movement, however, had less political success.
Having flowered in and around Glasgow during the latter half of the 19th century, anti-alcohol campaigning resulted in the Temperance Act (Scotland) 1913. This legislation led to local referenda over whether an area was to remain “wet” – with either no changes to the establishments licensed to sell alcohol, or a 25% reduction in their overall number – or become “dry”, with the sale of all alcohol in public houses and hotels prohibited.
For various reasons – not least the First World War, the 1918 flu pandemic, and the need to raise sufficiently large petitions to call for the polls – Temperance votes across Scotland weren’t possible until June 1920.
Fyffe’s encounter with the drunk Clydeside workman may have taken place just days after the votes in Glasgow.
There’s no doubt that the character singing I Belong to Glasgow loves his drink; a century on, it’s easy to argue that Fyffe was being overtly – fondly, even – satirical about what the journalist Ian Jack once called “the brotherly sentiments of affection that sprang awake from [alcohol’s] effects regularly at 10 on a Saturday night”.
Fyffe’s accompanying monologue introduced several popular catchphrases, including “under the affluence of
“Fyffe’s song was the origin of catchphrases incohol” such as, under the affluence of
incohol” and suggests a gentle satire of Prohibitionists – “I always say that a man who takes a good drink, well he’s a man […] When you’re teetotal, you’ve always got a rotten feeling that everybody’s your boss.”
Of course, by the time Fyffe began performing the song in 1921, much of the Scottish electorate had spoken on the prohibition question. The vast majority of Temperance referenda had come down in favour of “no change”; only 40 districts across Scotland voted in favour of “no licence”, and many of those failed to gain the support needed to trigger any change.
Nevertheless, Prohibition did become a fact of life in some parts of Scotland – Kilsyth, Kirkintilloch, Wick and Lerwick turned “dry” in 1920, and the occasional Temperance vote continued to be held in the years and decades to come.
Kilmacolm in Inverclyde didn’t even have a public house until 1998.
Will Fyffe, meantime, gifted Glasgow something few other UK cities can claim – a distinctive song to call their own – albeit with a side-order of a reputation for loving alcohol!