What happened to the Glasgow I love?

The perception of Glasgow still held by outsiders – that it’s all tenement blocks and stabbings, that the only food on offer is gussied up cholesterol and that its football divide is less about sport and more a continuation of the thirty years’ war – has always inspired resistance from those who know the city.

As someone from Glasgow who has since left, I’ve always felt duty bound to put up a bravura defence of my city when it’s brought into disrepute. Have these people not heard of the artistic heritage of Kelvingrove and the Burrell; the academic renown of Glasgow’s universities, the architectural bequest of our status as the Empire’s second city; or the culinary heights scaled by places like the Ubiquitous Chip?

But walking down Sauchiehall Street recently, past the charred remnants of Mackintosh’s School of Art and the graffitied empty husks of Marks and Spencer, Watt Brothers department store and British Home Stores, it was hard not to feel a twinge of embarrassment about all those Scouse-like displays of hyper localism I’d mounted when the Dear Green Place was being traduced.