Best place you've ever been?

[Tarquin Thunderthighs lll]

The fabulous interior of the Oran Mor bar in the West End of Glasgow. Also the historic, Horseshoe Bar in Glasgow city centre - with the longest bar in the UK. The Golfers Bar in Rothesy with its great art-deco counter and artifacts. The Neptune pub in Broadstairs with its Victorian inside that is now listed...

The topic is the best places you've ever been, not "Where have you lived?".

[Diamond Lil]

The fabulous interior of the Oran Mor bar in the West End of Glasgow.

Surely not so much the bar as the incredible ceiling painted by Alasdair Gray, Peeps?  How can someone who has written what is acknowledged as being one of the greatest books ever (Lanark) also be a gifted artist?  I strongly feel artistic talents should be shared around (and ditto for the sharing out in my family too - speaking as someone who can't draw a cat when my brother announces we should all have a post-dinner /Drambuie game of Pictionary on the aforementioned Algarve terrace )

[Vulture]

The fabulous interior of the Oran Mor bar in the West End of Glasgow. Also the historic, Horseshoe Bar in Glasgow city centre - with the longest bar in the UK. The Golfers Bar in Rothesy with its great art-deco counter and artifacts. The Neptune pub in Broadstairs with its Victorian inside that is now listed...

The topic is the best places you've ever been, not "Where have you lived?".

....and?  Are you now the topic police? Why can't the best place you've ever been be the same place you've lived!

[Tarquin Thunderthighs lll]

It was meant to be a joke, Vult. Right, that's it - I'm off to become a plumber...

[Vulture]

It was meant to be a joke, Vult. Right, that's it - I'm off to become a plumber...

And you think that I wrote was serious?  I think you need to be a plumber's mate first! 

[Tarquin Thunderthighs lll]

I could never be that familiar.

[Malc]

I met Alasdair Gray a few times back in the late 70s, he was great buddies with Archie Hind, another writer whose daughter Sheila was married to my brother Dave.
I tried to get into his art and writing but couldn't, mostly because I had met him, I think, and the clique of writers he and Archie knocked about with sort of grated on me (I was in my early twenties).
They were all fervent Scottish Nationalists and quite honestly believed the Scots to be a superior people. I remember one soiree where the English received short shrift, as though they were racists to a man, and the source of all Scotland's problems.
I think around that time I had been turned down by the Glasgow School of Art after sending in some awful portfolio, so I was very anti any writer/artists whose work looked like Gray's or John Byrne's. I saw them as unoriginal, their art looked like a lot of stuff that appeared after the war, I couldn't see what the fuss was about, and anyway why were they trying to be artists AND writers? What an exercise in clever-dickery...

So I was pretty down on the whole Glasgow art scene at the time as you can see. I'm not so down on Byrne these days (did you know he lives in the highlands with Tilda Swinton?) but Gray...? Nah, even as I get older I'm not drawn to him.

[Diamond Lil]

Oh thanks for that, Malc...and here was me thinking he was a clever dick

[Malc]

Thing was, as a young and aspiring cartoonist I was trying to be a writer/artist clever dick too.

[The Peepmaster]

That guy with no arms and legs, who swam the English Channel - now he was a clever-dick!

[Diane CBPFC]

no I think his name was Robert

[Roger Kettle]

Malc, John Byrne used to live in my village here before he headed North. This was around the time his hugely successful Tutti Frutti was on television so he was quite a celebrity. Never did meet him so I've no idea if he was also a clever dick.

[Rob Baker]

I'm very fortunate that my work will allow me to travel all over the World -- I've visited such places as Seoul, Bangkok and Rio, and seen some great places inbetween. Roger is quite correct about the Algarve , but I have to say that one of the most memorable places I went to was a few years ago on a mini-tour of Scotland -- Glasgow.

Peepsy named a few great bars, but the whole city, in my view, was brilliant. Some of the architecture in the centre is stunning (if you like that sort of thing). After Glasgow we stayed a couple of days in Edinborough , which, in my opinion was a bit of a let down  -  Glasgow is miles better.

Don't even bother with Bath or London.  I urge everyone to put away their preconceptions and go up there and visit (but it might pay to take a phrase book ).

That was a Public Service Announcement on behalf of Glasgow City Council. And now, the weather.....

[Malc]

Roger, I hated Tutti Frutti. That WAS an exercise in clever-dickery - unbelievable dialogue, and I don't say that because I want kitchen sink drama, it was a total exercise in verbal masturbation.

Away from Scotland, you tend to forget the things that riled when you lived there, but every time that bloody series comes up I get all agitated and come out in hives. Emma Thomson gives me the heebie jeebies, and though I'm the mildest mannered of chaps, I would never tire kicking her.

[Diane CBPFC]

Just in case Emma Thompson is reading: I loved you in Last Chance Harvey