Alex Norton I Belong to Glasgow

When I was 18, I packed all my worldly goods into the back

of a clapped-out old taxi that I'd bought from a pal for 50 quid

and headed south to seek my fortune.

See, back then Glasgow seemed to me to be a dark and depressing place

that didn't offer much of a future to somebody like me.

Look at it now, eh?

It's like something out a Dan Dare comic.

I like it.

This year, with the eyes of the world on Clydeside,

four Glaswegians explore what it means to belong to Glasgow.

My name's Alex Norton.

Glasgow is where I discovered what I wanted from life...

and what I didn't.

It turned me into a panto dame

and taught me to do a turn.

It's the place that drove me away and it's the place

I'll always return to, even if there's been a murder!

One thing's for certain, I definitely belong to Glasgow.

MUSIC: "I Belong To Glasgow"

# But when I get a couple of drinks on a Saturday

# Glasgow belongs to me. #

They say it's good for the soul to go back to your roots now and again,

to get that warm and fuzzy feeling from walking the same streets

you walked as a wean, remembering who you are and where you came from.

But to be honest, it's hard to get that nostalgic glow

in the middle of a shopping centre car park.

See, the thing about the Glasgow I belong to is,

there's no' all that much of it left.

They started pulling down the Glasgow of my childhood

in the 1960s, replacing it with tower blocks and motorways.

In those days they measured progress in dual carriageways

and reinforced concrete.

This film, made in 1971, looks forward to what

life in the city would be like in 1980.

Now, in most places, nine years wouldn't seem like a giant leap into

the future but this was Glasgow and the pace of change was relentless.

Well, almost.

If they'd ever finished this road it would've taken us...

here.

Glasgow Green is the biggest open space in the centre of the city.

Traditionally it's the place where Glaswegians have come to

air their washing and mount their political demonstrations.

In 1917, 80,000 workers marched through

here in support of the Russian Revolution.

50 years later, the council tried to plough a motorway right

through the middle of it.

Well, of course they did. I mean, look at the place,

a nice big patch of grass.

Makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

Public outrage led to the plans for Glasgow Green being scrapped

and it continues to provide good fun for all the family.

But just across the Clyde in my childhood home,

the Gorbals, we didn't get off so lightly.

I'm coming here to see what's left of my old neighbourhood.

'Sir Basil Spence's high-rise flats in Hutchesontown, Gorbals -

'the first of the Comprehensive Development Areas.'

Me and my folks moved from my granny's house to the

Gorbals in 1954. Yep, that's me!

Our new home was a single-end,

a one-room flat with an outside lavvy in Moffat Street.

When I lived here, Moffat Street looked like this.

Now it looks like this.

They pulled our building down and then they pulled

down the building next to ours and then they pulled down the building

next to that. Finally, they pulled all the buildings down

and after a couple of false starts, replaced them with these.

They're nice enough, I suppose,

but where do you go to dreep aff a wash house roof these days?

For the uninitiated, dreeping aff a wash house roof was

a game in which you hung by your fingers from the roof of a backcourt

wash house until you could hold on no longer, and with the ground

looking about 100 feet away, you'd let go and slither down.

Frankly, I'm surprised it wasn't included in the Commonwealth Games.

Dixon's Blazes iron foundry used to be just down there

and I remember so well the sky glowing red with the flames

from its big blast furnace, and my maw used to tell me that if I was a

naughty boy, Old Nick would drag me down to his big, bad

burny fire, and I believed her.

Well, why wouldn't I?

I could see his lum at the end of our road.

Like many an old codger, it's tempting to look back at my

Gorbals childhood with rose-tinted spectacles but I only remember

wearing sunglasses once as a child.

And it was for this.

In the '40s and '50s, the Gorbals' weans were made to take part

in a strange experiment.

Apparently we weren't getting enough sunshine.

So they brought the sun to the Gorbals and zapped us with UV light.

There are times when I look back at my life here as

if it was all just a strange dream, and this is one of the strangest.

There's only one big lum in the Gorbals these days

and it's steam it pumps out, not soot.

The air is cleaner

and the new houses are a huge improvement on the '60s tower blocks.

Although there's not much here for me to get dewy eyed about,

there are many reasons I'm proud to say I lived in the Gorbals.

And one of them is this place, the Citizens Theatre.

I spent a large chunk of 1971 working with the

Citizens Theatre for Youth Company,

and I can safely say you'd be hard pressed to find a theatre

that's more at one with its local community

than the Citz, and that's why I've come back.

This is a Gorbals card.

If you're part of the local community, for two quid you can come

and see any show at the Citizens, but there's a bunch of folk here

who don't want you just to come and sit on your jacksie.

Oh, no, they want to get you up on the stage.

These actors are members of the Citizens Community Theatre

and it's them I've come here to see.

The company have been devising a piece called On Common Ground

and they're going to be doing

it in the Gorbals at the Commonwealth Games

and they're going to be working with Native Americans from Canada and

it's all about the cultural things that unite us rather than divide us.

I'll let them get on wi' it.

In this improvised scene, a large

and mysterious bird of fortune from Canada descends on Glasgow.

-Smells lovely.

-Oh, what's that on ma sheet?

Look at the size of it, that's bird keech.

I just feel at peace here, you know. It's like I always say,

it's my second home.

It's just opened up a new world.

A world that I never had.

That reminds me, there was something on the news last night

about that, some big bird's went missing or something like that.

I think it's as vital as learning other skills, as reading,

writing, counting.

It should be vital and every school should be teaching children

how to do drama to boost their confidence in being heard.

-See this big bird?

-Right.

The shit's meant to have medicinal purposes in it.

You're joking!

No, Ma, honestly, it's for, like, wrinkles and all that.

-Here, try some.

-Get my spider's legs in.

Oh, look! Your wrinkles are disappearing.

Put some on me.

They don't call it play for nothing.

When you were a child you played at doing things like houses,

nurses, doctors, playing at school, working in a shop

and that's more or less all acting is.

We could jar that and put it onto eBay.

Gosh, you look 20 years younger. So do you.

It stops me being nervous, relaxes me.

We need to think up a catchy name for it.

Oh, aye, right, what could we call it?

I know... Let's Get Shitfaced!

THEY LAUGH

I can't believe it's because of a theatre that my problems are

melting away.

See, that's what community theatre is all about.

Telling your own stories in your own language

and giving people a bloody good night oot.

Meeting the actors from the Citizens community group has

reaffirmed my belief that when it's at its best the theatre is

a place that adds magic to our lives.

I'm now heading south to Pollokshaws to show you how

I first discovered that magic for myself.

Pollokshaws is where my family moved in the late 1950s.

I'd just turned seven and was about to start striking out into the world,

travelling as a lone adventurer on the Glasgow Corporation trams.

They used to call these things the "galleons of the tenements",

and you can understand why.

I mean, just look at it.

I can't tell you how excited I am to be on the top deck

of a Glasgow tram again, something I've no' done since I was a wee boy.

Trams, more than anything, connect me with my past and one of the

greatest joys of being on a tram when you were a wee boy was this.

If you were lucky

and the car was empty, you could have your own personal state room

to yourself, and for a three-ha'penny half,

the world was your oxter.

At its peak, in 1922, Glasgow had more than 1,000 trams

and 100 miles of track.

This network was entirely self-sufficient.

The trams were all designed and built by the Glasgow Corporation

and they had their own dedicated power station in Pinkston.

When they finally stopped running in September 1962,

a quarter of a million people turned up to wave them away.

I was one of them and seeing so many Glaswegian men

crying in public was a sight I'll never forget.

The trams gave me a chance to step out of my little world

and discover what delights the city had to offer.

Me and my pals would take the 25 out to Rouken Glen or the 14A

to the West End to wander the long corridors of the Kelvingrove

Art Gallery. I could have lived in this place. I loved it.

It wasn't pompous, it wasn't snooty and, what's more, it was free

to get in, which made a big difference to kids like me.

I'm a passionate believer in people being able to see great art

without having to pay for it, but what made it really exciting

was that it made me feel like I was on a giant film set.

Back in Pollokshaws, things weren't quite so idyllic.

This is where we lived, Kirk Lane.

Compared to the Gorbals, Pollokshaws was

like a wee village. But unbeknownst to us, we'd just

moved out of the first part of the city to be

knocked down by the council and into the second one.

If anyone ever decides to put up a blue plaque to me round here,

they're going to have to hang it in mid-air.

The Pollokshaws of today is very different from the wee village

I grew up in.

That's my primary school behind me, Sir John Maxwell's,

now completely derelict.

And here is the remains of the swimming baths,

completely demolished, but it was just opposite there that

I made the most important discovery of my life - the public library.

Today's library shelves are stowed out with self-help books,

but when I was ten years old they were something of a rarity.

So I was very surprised

when I came across this one in my wee local library.

It was written by a popular stage and television magician

called Al Koran and it completely blew my mind.

It made me realise that I didn't have to live the kind of life

that was being pencilled in for me.

His wise words set me on the path that I was to follow for the rest

of my life and it was a path that began in a rather unusual place.

The Eastwood branch of the BBs.

The Boys' Brigade exists to promote the habits of obedience,

reverence, discipline,

self-respect and all that tends towards a true Christian manliness.

For me, it turned out to be the route into what my dad

considered one of the least manly professions.

This is my old BB hall, and in 1963 it was also home to the

Eastwood Parish Church Dramatic Club and one night me

and my pals came to see one of the productions they were putting on

and I thought it was really good. And I thought, "You know what?

"I quite fancy doing a bit of that myself."

Six weeks later the curtains opened

and I found myself facing an audience for the very first time.

It was the beginning of the rest of my life.

I'm surrounded here by some of the wonderful people

I worked with on my very first stage production.

Margaret, you were the artistic director of the club

when I joined in 1963.

-Yes.

-What did you think?

Tell me honestly, what did you think when you

found out that a plukey faced 13-year-old

wanted to become a member of the club?

Well, I resisted you joining the club for quite some time!

You were too young and I said, "Well, we've got late nights

"and he's just a young boy and I really don't think

"he should be coming for a bit." But the BB officers kept coming

back and saying, "We've got this boy and he's dying to be a member

"of this drama group."

And I said, "Well, bring him along." And they brought

him along and he was this wee thin soul, not very tall, very small.

I thought, "What on earth can I do with him?"

However, we did quite a lot with you.

I loved it, I loved every minute of it

and I can remember it all as clear as day.

It was so exciting, so thrilling and so different from the kind

of life that I thought I was going to have to be involved in.

We thought you might like a souvenir of your very first

performance and this is something that I think you'll treasure.

What is this? What is this? Let me see.

Aw, look at this!

"Eastwood Parish Church Dramatic Club

"present their centenary year revue.

"Spring madness in the church hall at 7.30pm."

-Aw, look at this. Have I got my name on this anywhere?

-You have.

"Alex Norton." Look at that, "Matt Robertson, Jack Sinclair."

Third from the bottom of the bill.

Hey, you've got to start somewhere, haven't you?!

'I owe a huge debt to Margaret from the drama club for the belief

'she showed in me,

'but my parents were divided over my new-found passion.'

My mother supported me but my father was completely opposed.

He was a plumber and he wanted me to follow him into a trade.

The irony is, he was the one who gave me

my first taste of the theatre

when he took me along to a variety show at the old Metropole.

A lot of middle-class actors became actors

because their parents would take them to the rep theatre.

They'd go and see plays.

Well, I didn't. I went to see variety shows.

I left school as soon as I turned 15 and I got my first

job at the lighting board of the Lex McLean Show

at the Pavilion Theatre.

Lex was one of the most charismatic performers of his day

and he was a huge influence on me.

That's a very happy, smiling face, sir.

Is that your wife?

Oh, novelty night.

LAUGHTER

The thing that struck me most about Lex

was the way he worked his audience.

From the moment he came on stage, he had them eating out of his hand.

Watching him made me realise that what people wanted more than

anything else was to be entertained.

I've come here to meet Bob Bain,

who's helping keep Lex's memory alive in a loft in Auchinloch.

Oh, look at this.

This is the motherload.

That is unbelievable.

He used to come from the dressing room and he would walk below...

-Because I was up on a kind of platform...

-I know where you are.

I would see him, you know, walking past,

and he would just look through the curtains, just like that,

and watch the audience. Eventually I said to Fergie, my boss,

"What does he do that for every night?"

He says, "He's counting the house."

He says, "He disnae trust them at the box office.

"He's counting the house."

Your talking about Lex Mclean...

-There's something here.

-What's that?

That was Lex McLean's bunnet.

That was the original bunnet he used in his TV show.

-In the TV show? This is it?

-That's it.

Good Lord. You know, actually, when you said that, I recognised it.

I recognised it cos it's almost in black and white.

-Do you think I might actually...?

-Absolutely.

-Would that be all right with you?

-No problem. Pleasure.

-Oh-ho-ho!

This is a moment, to try on Lex McLean's bunnet!

It fits. It fits an' all!

Keep it bright! Keep it bright! Lexy, sexy Lexy!

-Where's ma bunnet?

-On yer heid!

Good job you telt me or I would have went oot withoot it.

Attitudes have moved on since Lex's day,

but his traditional male take on life still strikes a chord

with Glaswegians of my generation.

I feel terrible, so I do, seeing you staggering oot that pub

-every night at ten o'clock.

-You feel terrible?!

How do you think we feel, coming oot at ten o'clock?

You know, it's such a...

..such a vital part of my life.

And the Lex Mclean Show, I mean, that was...

That was an experience I would never have got if I'd stayed on at school.

And I'm not saying that anybody should leave school,

don't get an education, but for me that was the best..

That was university, was going to the Pavilion

and working backstage, and watching Lex Mclean.

I reached my teens in 1963 and my hormones were busting onto

the scene at the same time as Bob Dylan

and the Beatles were turning the music world upside down.

I was determined to make myself as appealing as possible to the

opposite sex, so I had some serious thinking to do.

Did I want to be an actor?

Or did I want to be, like, a folk singer?

For a while, it could have gone either way.

For me, acting and singing have always gone hand in hand.

This is me with my old pal Brian Pettifer.

At the time, I was playing in a duo with his big sister Linda,

who went on to find fame as this Linda

from Richard and Linda Thompson.

# I came to you... #

I still think Alex and Linda has got a better ring to it.

# ..I'm sick and weary... #

The folk scene in Glasgow in the '60s was vibrant.

There was so much talent around, so much new stuff,

and it was a great break from the kind of traditional music

that I'd been listening to. When I say traditional,

I mean the stuff that was coming out the wireless.

There was this whole new movement and it was people like

The Incredible String Band, John Martyn, who I was at school with,

he was in my school in Shawlands... Bert Jansch, people like that.

Glasgow's folk revival had its roots in the politics of protest.

This film from 1961 shows a demonstration against the siting

of an American Polaris submarine base at the Holy Loch near Dunoon.

The demonstrators include a group of musicians

called the Glasgow Eskimos,

who provided the soundtrack to the Anti-Polaris movement,

and they were led by my old French teacher Maurice Blythman.

# Oh, the Yanks have just drapt anchor in Dunoon

# An' they've had their civic welcome frae the toon

# As they came up the measured mile, Bonnie Mary o' Argyll

# Wis wearin' spangled drawers below her goon

# For ye cannae spend a dollar when you're deid

# Ding-dong

# No, you cannae spend a dollar when you're deid

# Singing ding-dong dollar Everybody holler

# You cannae spend a dollar when you're deid

# But the Clyde is sure to prosper noo they're here

# For they're charging one and ten pence for a beer

# And if you want a taxi you'll stick it up your jacksie

# And they'll charge you 30 bob to Sandbank Pier. #

THEY LAUGH

That's so funny. That's brilliant!

Sorry.

The thing that I remember most of all from when I first started

listening to protest music was, I knew all the tunes.

They were all familiar to me.

Songs that were grafted onto tunes that already existed,

-popular tunes, weren't they?

-Aye, absolutely.

Well, it was policy because you're trying to write

songs for a particular purpose.

These are not just political songs, they're demonstration songs,

and they've got a kind of enormous demotic energy, so you use...

Maurice Blythman, I always remember him saying to me,

quoting General Booth of the Salvation Army, who said,

apparently, "The Devil always has the best tunes."

And that was the kind of idea behind that.

I mean, that was a conscious decision.

You know, they deliberately chose things

that were football songs and stuff like that.

-Sectarian songs.

-Sectarian songs.

Well, I used to describe these songs as being "Vaticanly challenged"

because they were all set to sort of...

Rangers-type songs, you know,

Hello, Hello and so on and so forth.

-# Hullo!

-Hullo!

-Hullo!

-Hullo!

# We are the Eskimos

-# Hullo!

-Hullo!

-Hullo!

-Hullo!

# The Glasgow Eskimos

# We'll gaff that nyaff called Lanin

# And we'll spear him where he blows

# We are the Glasgow Eskimos... #

The Glasgow folk wasn't just anti American military,

it was also anti American culture.

Now, this was something I could never get my head around.

I loved America, but not as much as these guys.

# Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys... #

Never mind the Glasgow Eskimos, meet the Govan gunslingers.

The Grand Ol' Opry has been here on the Govan Road since 1971

and there's something about the place that just seems right.

It's a great big slice of make believe

and I'm all in favour of that.

GUN POPS

Even if I'm in a bit deeper than I would like.

"Please don't think I'm weak,

"I didn't turn the other cheek.

"Sometimes you gotta fight to be a man."

This is the gun fight at Govan Gulch.

-COMPERE:

-Gunfighters, are you ready?

-Fire!

-GUNS POP

-And Hot Shot wins! You've done this before.

-No!

-COMPERE:

-Oh, yes, you have.

Give him a huge round of applause.

Does anyone recognise this gentleman?

APPLAUSE

Well, there you are. You all saw it.

I gunned a man down in cold blood,

so finally I can say, with my hand on my heart,

"There's been a murder."

One more time!

HE SINGS

'I had no plans to be on stage at the start of the night,

'but when they asked me I just couldn't say no.

'There's something about being in Glasgow that brings out

'the performer in me.

'I know everybody says it, but you just can't beat a Glasgow audience.'

# Yes, you went back to the wild side of life... #

APPLAUSE

Cheerio!

Glasgow seems to be in love with country and western music,

and I think the reason for that is because

it's actually originally our music.

When all the Scottish immigrants and Irish immigrants went out to

America in the 1800s to get work, they took the music with them

and then they shipped it right back to us.

So, really, we're listening to the music we used to listen to

over 100 years ago.

I think that's why it's so familiar and it's so popular.

It's certainly popular with me. I love it!

By 1965, I had definitely decided that I was going to be an actor,

but I fancied myself as a wee bit of a dandy.

So me and my pal Brian Pettifer went down to London

to the Portobello Road and got ourselves the gear,

which at the time was scarlet military jackets.

That's right, and we brought them back up to Glasgow.

-We thought we were the bee's knees.

-The cock of the walk.

And we went out one day, beautiful day, George Square...

-I remember.

-..wandering around, and we thought, "This is great."

When all of a sudden, we were surrounded by a bunch of neds.

And one of them, the guy at the front,

stopped us and he went, "All right, boys...

"Love the jackets. Where did you get them?"

And I said, "London. London, aye. We've just been in London.

"We bought them, we've come up here, eh? No bad."

So he says, "Aw-haw, a couple of London boys, eh?

"Well, as a matter of fact, as it happens,

"they jackets were stole off us at a party last night. Get them off!"

And I said, "Stolen? At a party? Where's your proof?"

So he looked at us, and goes, "There's my proof,"

and he had a big sword stuck doon his troosers.

So I grabbed Brian, cos I'd spotted a big polis man

at the other side of the square, and I grabbed Brian and I said,

"Brian, run!" And we legged it as fast as we could.

We got other side of the square and we got to the

safety of the big Glasgow polis, and we were in a hell of a lather.

And I said to him, "Look, Officer, those boys over there,

"they surrounded us.

"They're a gang. They've got knives, knuckle-dusters, bayonets,

-"and they threatened us."

-And he looked at us and he says...

-"What do you expect, dressed like that?"

-Fair enough, eh?

'And that was one life lesson that didn't go to waste.

'I used that encounter with the polis to draw from in future roles.'

If you were...

studying Glasgow over the years,

you could do a lot worst than watch all the episodes of Taggart

because, of course, Glasgow is one of the central features of Taggart.

You know, the city itself.

And you can see the buildings that were there that have gone now...

up to the present day. I mean, we were filming...

One of the episodes we were filming was down by the big granary

that used to be down by the Clydeside,

and it was there when we started the episode.

By the time we finished the episode, the granary had gone.

There he is. One to Charlie Delta 3.

Suspect heading into the old granary on South Street.

Follow me in.

You know, so you can see the changes in Glasgow all through the years.

I think it's quite a significant series.

The thing about Glasgow is it's full of stories.

You could make hundreds of programmes just like this one

because what makes the place so special is the people who live here.

Buildings go up and buildings come down,

but the people remain the same.

-What's this?

-That's bird keech!

LAUGHTER

Thank you for everything you've given me, Glasgow.

You made me the man I am.

In the mid-'60s, the great Hamish Imlach sang a song called

Cod Liver Oil And The Orange Juice,

and it says more about this city in its 11 verses

than all the chapters of an academic study.

# From the east there came a hard man

# Oh-oh, a' the way frae Brigton

# Ah-haw, glory hallelujah

# Cod liver oil and the orange juice

# He went intae a pub

# He came oot paralytic

# Oh-oh, VP an' the cider

# Ah-haw What a helluva mixture... #