Glasgow Urban Myths Read online

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to

  Lucy, Robin and Kate,

  my three mythically lovely

  and intelligent daughters.

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  INTRODUCTION

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  COPYRIGHT

  INTRODUCTION

  Glasgow urban myths, like that one about some Edinbuggers being occasionally pleasant, are as many and varied as Glaswegians themselves. There is the one about the well-to-do chap from the Mearns going into the city centre garage, after a hard day robbing punters, to pick up his Merc, and – shock, horror – it is gone. He reports it immediately to the police and they, of course, run him home promising immediate action. He is from the Mearns after all and forty years of rolling up your trouser leg has got to count for something.

  Joy in the morning – the polis have found his car. It is where he left it, though it has definitely been taken away and returned. He goes down to the garage to check it out and finds a note on the dashboard saying: “Frightfully sorry, romantic emergency. I’ve filled the tank and I noticed a copy of Opera Now on your front seat so enclosed are a couple of tickets for the first night of Don Giovanni at the Theatre Royal next week. Apologies once again. I hope you enjoy the opera.”

  The mannie is chuffed to bits. He has got a good story for his golf club mates and a night out with the wife at one of his favourite operas, especially nice as it was written by a Mason. Off they go, have a pleasant wee pre-theatre supper, watch the Don get dragged off to hell and listen to ‘Non mi dir, bell’idol mio’ from Donna Anna before heading back to their luxury detached bungalow.

  Which has been completely stripped while they enjoyed the opera. The thieves had, thoughtfully, left the insurance documents on the kitchen table.

  Then there is the one about the gay burglars, who break in, steal only your nicest bits of jewellery and rearrange the furniture so that it looks a lot better than it did. Or are they a myth?

  Here you will find hard truths and blatant lies, albeit in a sort of hit-and-myth style, but you will laugh, and you will repeat them.

  CHAPTER ONE

  I was first told this story when I was working on the Herald Diary. I was phoned by a Glasgow City Councillor, who swore to me that it had happened to one of his constituents. No names, no pack drill, John, but that whisky that you promised if I didn’t tell anyone that you believed it has been a long time in the post.

  This bloke goes out on a Saturday night to a party and has a couple of beers. He meets a girl who seems to like him and she invites him to another party. She takes him to a flat in Ruchill and they continue to drink, and even get involved with some other recreational drugs. There may even be a bit of haughmagandie involved.

  The next thing he knows, he wakes up, completely naked, in a bath filled with ice. He is still feeling the effects of the drugs and is totally hungover. He looks down at his chest, which has, “CALL 999 OR YOU WILL DIE” written on it in lipstick (good trick this, as it would need to be written upside down so that he could read it).

  There is a phone on a stand next to the bath, so he picks it up and dials. He explains to the NHS 24 emergency operator, who is saying: “Are you really sure that this is life-threatening?” what the situation is and that he doesn’t know where he is, what he has taken, or why he is really calling. She advises him to get out of the bath and look himself over in the mirror. He does, only to find two nine-inch slits in his lower back. She tells him to get back in the bath immediately, and they send an ambulance over. They find his kidneys have been removed. They are worth £10,000 each on the black market.

  Who could possibly believe this absurd urban legend?

  But then again, it does provide the world with what it needs most – a new word, ‘kidneynapping’. To the best of my knowledge, this has never happened. You need vast surgical teams to transfer kidneys, but, who knows, what with the march of technology, it may well become possible, and then the word will come into its own. And we will have ‘organlegging’ as well as, it occurs, ‘footlegging’.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Threat to Italians from the Tartan Army:

  Deep fry yer pizzas,

  We’re gonny deep fry yer pizzas.

  And now one that everyone outside Scotland thinks is a myth. Deep-fried Mars bars are on sale right across Scotland, with more than a fifth of chip shops serving up the delicacy.

  A study by NHS Greater Glasgow found 22% of Scottish takeaways had the foodstuff on its menu and another 17% used to sell them.

  Researchers surveyed 500 chip shops and found children are the main buyers, with one shop selling up to 200 a week. The shops they interviewed also reported they have been asked to deep-fry Snickers, Creme Eggs and pizzas in the past.

  Dr David Morrison, consultant in public health medicine, said, “We live in Scotland but we’d never actually seen deep-fried Mars bars for sale. We thought they might be fictitious. But the Scottish diet is a major health issue and it’s important to know what the facts are. We can now confirm that there is no doubt – the deep-fried Mars bar is not just an urban myth.”

  Dr Morrison and his colleague Dr Mark Pettigrew decided to conduct the survey after the Mars bars received a mention on US television’s The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on NBC. Their study is published in an issue of the medical journal The Lancet.

  The Mars bar was first produced in 1920 by Frank and Ethel Mars in Tacoma, Washington, in the US. It was locally named the Milky Way but called the Mars bar in Europe and, as far as I can discover, has never been deep-fried in its country of origin. And who, on God’s green earth, would want a larded-up Creme Egg?

  I have tried, unsuccessfully, to convince an Italian woman of my acquaintance that in Scotland we deep-fry pizzas. “In lardo, no!” she says, and she will not believe me.

  CHAPTER THREE

  As they sing in Belarus:

  Here we glow,

  Here we glow,

  Here we glow.

  Of all the many monuments in the Southern Necropolis, one has gained a unique and mysterious reputation. It is the resting place of John S Smith, carpet manufacturer, his wife Magdalene and their housekeeper Mary McNaughton. In the form of a veiled woman beside a broken pillar, the ivy-covered and much-weathered memorial tells a fascinating story. Although the date of her husband’s death is no longer visible on the stone, the tragic story behind the accidental death of Magdalene and her housekeeper is poignantly told.

  On 29 October 1933, while returning to their home at Langside Avenue from church and sheltering from the heavy rain behind an umbrella, they walked into the path of a tramcar on Queen’s Drive. Both were taken to the nearby Victoria Infirmary, but sadly Magdalene died on arrival and Mrs McNaughton pass
ed away two weeks later. The monument is a solemn and fitting memorial to the tragedy. Local myth tells how the White Lady turns her head as you pass. Should she catch your eye, you will be turned to stone. There is, from personal knowledge, a mysterious glow about the White Lady at dead of night, or was that just me?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  This is the one where all the guys go:

  “Oyaah!”

  I heard this one a few years back. This is a story of a guy in Springburn who was a bit despondent over a recent fight with a girlfriend and decided he needed a little fresh air to clear his head. He thought he’d climb a pylon, of which, if you live in Springburn, you have a choice. He proceeded to climb his chosen pylon, but before doing so decided that a few beers might help his thinking on the subject.

  So here he is, 60 feet up, drinking his beer, trying to soothe his bruised ego, as one does. He had five beers when he decided he needed the toilet, as you do after five beers. As it was such a long climb down, he decided to pee off the pylon.

  Electricity is a funny thing. You don’t need to touch a wire in order to get a shock. Depending on the conditions, you could be as far away as six feet and still get shocked.

  The Special Brew kid proceeded to make water, almost certainly unaware that salt water is an excellent conductor of electricity, and the electricity arced up the stream, up to his wedding tackle, and blew him off the pylon.

  The line went down and the lecky guys sent workmen to see if there was any damage. What they found was an extremely dead person, his fly down, a blackened smoking stump where his tackle had been, and a single Special Brew left on a girder of the pylon.

  If this is actually true, please don’t write in and tell me.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  This is the one that leaves a bad taste in your mouth

  This story was told to me by a friend of a friend of a friend who went on holiday to Spain with his family in their caravan. Being Glaswegian, they had not, of course, booked and, when they finally found a camp site that wasn’t completely full, they discovered that they had to set up camp right next to a group of English football supporters. After a bit of harassment of their teenage daughters they complained to the management, but there was no room anywhere else, so they stayed in their caravan every day until the hooligans had left, but eventually lost patience after some late-night hassles and complained again.

  The manager told the English guys to tone it down and threatened to evict them. The guys of course knew where the complaints were coming from, but seemed a bit intimidated, especially when one of them got nutted by another Scottish bloke on the site.

  Then the family returned from a day trip to the village and saw some of these guys scurrying out of the caravan howling with laughter. They did not appear to be carrying anything that belonged to the family and they rushed to their caravan, only to find that nothing seemed to have been disturbed or taken. Cameras and other bits and pieces were still there.

  Things seemed to settle down a bit after this and there was no more trouble, but when they got home and developed their holiday snaps they found photos of the English guys posing in the family’s caravan with the family toothbrushes, bristle first, stuck up their bums.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Hardened criminal

  This is possibly actually true, as a friend claims that he had a newspaper clipping of it that he carried round for years until it disintegrated.

  A driver of a ready-mix concrete lorry left for his work one day in a bit of a hurry. Later in the morning he realized he had forgotten his sandwiches, so he decided to stop at his house during a delivery nearby and pick them up.

  As he approached the house, he noticed a strange car outside. Curious, he entered quietly and tiptoed toward the bedroom, where he heard his wife and a strange male voice indulging in what was obviously a post-coital conversation.

  Just as quietly, he left the house and walked to his lorry. He backed it up to the car and, poking the chute through a window that he quietly broke, filled the car with wet cement. He called his office on the mobile, confessed what he had done, and offered to pay for the concrete. Amid uproarious laughter, he was told that the load was on the company.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  There is a moral to this story

  This can’t possibly be true – who would be that stupid? – but it’s got enough legs to make people, especially engaged women, just a bit nervous.

  A young couple were married in Glasgow Cathedral amid much joy and hoopla. The wedding was a large, elaborate festival – the bride was radiant and the groom handsome. Both families were delighted.

  During the reception, the bride’s father placed his dinner jacket on the back of his chair and went off to dance and socialize with his guests. Later in the evening, he looked into his jacket pocket for the three grand in cash he had brought to settle the bills with the band and several other people who had provided services. This gives it a wee ring of truth for me, as musos always want paid in cash. The money, of course, was gone, as was his wallet. What to do? His daughter’s wedding couldn’t end in disaster. Fortunately, one of his closest friends had a gold credit card. The guest paid all the bills, and the next day, the bride’s father repaid him. But both were still astonished that a wedding guest had stolen the money.

  A week later, the video photographer delivered the wedding video to the bride’s family for checking before final edit. The father was amazed and a bit less than pleased to see footage of his new son-in-law removing his jacket from the chair and trousering the cash and wallet.

  And the moral is, look for video cameras before you steal anything.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Getting ahead

  I have been told that this is a genuine reply to a guy who had been pestering the Uni, but I don’t believe it. It does have a kind of studenty feel to it, though, but the grammar is too good.

  Paleoanthropology Department

  Glasgow University.

  Dear Sir,

  Thank you for your latest submission to the University, labelled, “211-D, layer seven, next to the clothes pole. Hominid skull”. We have given this specimen a careful and detailed examination, and regret to inform you that we disagree with your theory that it represents, “conclusive proof of the presence of Early Man in Priesthill two million years ago”. It appears to us that what you have found is the head of a Barbie doll, of the variety one of our staff, who has small children, believes to be the “Wedding Barbie”. It is evident that you have given a great deal of thought to the analysis of this specimen, and you may be quite certain that those of us who are familiar with your prior work in the field were loath to contradict your findings. However, we do feel that there are a number of physical attributes of the specimen which might have given you a clue or two to its modern origin:

  1. The material is moulded plastic. Ancient hominid remains are usually fossilized bone. No, they are always fossilized bone. They are never, ever plastic. Really, not ever.

  2. The cranial capacity of the specimen is approximately nine cubic centimetres, well below the threshold of even the earliest identified proto-hominids.

  3. The dentition pattern evident on the “skull” is more consistent with the common domesticated scabby dug than it is with the “ravenous man-eating Pliocene whelks” that you speculate roamed the swamps of Scotland during that time. This latter finding is certainly one of the most intriguing hypotheses you have submitted in your history with this institution, but the evidence seems to weigh rather heavily against it. Without going into too much detail, let us say that:

  A. The specimen looks like the head of a Barbie doll that has been chewed by a dog.

  B. Whelks don’t have teeth.

  It is with feelings tinged with melancholy that we must deny your request to have the specimen carbon dated. This is partially due to the heavy load our laboratory must bear in its normal operation, and partly due to carbon dating’s notorious inaccuracy in fossils of recent geologic record. To the
best of our knowledge, no Barbie dolls were produced prior to the 1950s, and carbon dating is likely to produce wildly inaccurate results.

  Sadly, we must also deny your request that we approach the Phylogeny Department with the concept of assigning your specimen the scientific name, “Scottijockodus Gaunyadancer”. Speaking personally, I, for one, fought tenaciously for the acceptance of your proposed taxonomy, but was ultimately voted down because the species name that you selected was stupid, and didn’t really sound like it might be Latin.

  However, we gladly accept your generous donation of this fascinating specimen to the University. While it is undoubtedly not a hominid fossil, it is, nonetheless, yet another riveting example of the great body of work you seem to accumulate here so effortlessly. You should know that our Director has reserved a special shelf in his own office for the display of the specimens you have previously submitted to us, and the entire staff speculates daily on what you will happen upon next in your digs at the site you have discovered in your back green. We eagerly anticipate the trip to visit us that you proposed in your last letter, and several of us are pressing the Director to pay for it. We are particularly interested in hearing you expand on your theories of the “trans-positating fillifitation of ferrous ions in a structural matrix” that makes the excellent juvenile Tyrannosaurus Rex femur you recently discovered take on the deceptive appearance of a rusty 9mm shifting spanner.

  Yours most sincerely,