It was all started by Andrew Neil, the Scot and former BBC broadcaster who remains one of the biggest beasts in Britain’s media jungle.
Neil was in Glasgow this month when, apparently for the first time in years, he drove down part of Sauchiehall Street, the most famous thoroughfare in the city. Scots say that in its heyday up to the 1970s, it was one of the best streets in Britain.
“It used to be world-famous, Glasgow’s equivalent of Oxford Street,” an angry Neil thundered later that day on X. “It’s now a shambles and a disgrace to Scotland’s biggest city. A national scandal. Glasgow city council should be put into administration.”
His intervention sparked fury, recrimination but also resigned agreement in Glasgow.
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Sauchiehall (pronounced ‘Sok-ee-hawl’) Street occupies a warm niche of nostalgia in the heart of Glaswegians. It bisects the north of the city centre, east to west. Part pedestrianised, it is a meandering, 2.4km boulevard of shops, bars, restaurants and assorted culture and entertainment venues.
The Dublin equivalent might be O’Connell Street, Henry Street, Grafton Street and South William Street all stitched together, end-to-end.
Sauchiehall Street’s venues once hosted the likes of Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland. It had the best department stores in Britain, outside of London. In the 1970s and 1980s iconic clubs such as Victoria’s were still the stuff of legend.
Glaswegians have always loved their famous old street. Except nowadays, they seem to love it and hate it all at once. Sauchiehall Street’s physical decline into shabbiness over recent decades has been steady but sure.
Despite attempts at regeneration, it is blighted by empty units. Most of the big names have left, replaced by a blur of fried chicken outlets, vape stores and bubble tea shops. Fires have also destroyed some of its most famous old haunts, leaving behind ugly voids on the streetscape, like the gaps of pulled teeth.
In local media there are often articles lamenting the state of “the Sauchie”, a symbol of the supposed decline of Glasgow city since the pandemic. Neil’s angry contribution led to a fresh wave of exasperated complaint.
Glasgow lawyer and columnist for the Scottish edition of the Times, Philip Rodney, said Neil had articulated “what thousands of Glaswegians have been thinking for years”.
“When a family watches a loved-one self destruct, they stage an intervention ... Glasgow needs an intervention,” he wrote. Rodney has produced myriad columns complaining about the street, including in the weeks leading up to Neil’s rant on X.
“We’ve tried everything short of a seance to improve Sauchiehall Street. Let’s stop forcing it back into a shopping street. Make it a creative district,” he said recently.
Kevin McKenna, a feature writer in Glasgow paper the Herald, wrote that “for five years, the eastern end of Sauchiehall Street has resembled a zombie apocalypse zone”. He complained of a surfeit of student flats “with the aesthetic appeal of a workman’s hut”.
He lamented the “endless cycle of melancholy” as Glaswegians fret over the street. He also highlighted that Sauchiehall still had charm and myriad attractions, such as the King’s Theatre, the Centre for Contemporary Arts and the famous Garage nightclub.
I was determined to see for myself what was irking everybody. On Monday evening, while in Glasgow on other business, I meandered up to Sauchiehall Street.
I started at the eastern end, where “Sauchie” ends at the top of Buchanan Street, one of Scotland’s most prestigious shopping streets with its luxury boutiques. This end of Sauchiehall Street, near the Royal Concert Hall, is attractive and trendy.
Head westwards and it soon gets scruffier once you cross the junction with West Nile Street. This section, still pedestrianised, is pockmarked with large empty units. There is a huge, unsightly gap where a fire started in Victoria’s and spread. That was in 2018.
Further along, the section between Rose Street and Hope Street is the worst for retail neglect. The old BHS department store has lain derelict since 2016. The C&A shut 25 years ago. This week, it was abandoned again.
The Glasgow School of Art, just off the street, burned down in 2014, and again in 2018. The second fire also collapsed the old O2 ABC theatre on Sauchiehall Street and surrounding buildings. To this day, the site looks like it was hit by a cruise missile.
But for all Sauchie’s problems, it retains character. I tracked its decline out past Charing Cross before returning through the western end. Suddenly, the most God-awful singing filled the air, startling pedestrians.
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It came from Vibes, an underground venue. It was holding its weekly open-mic jam session. But somebody had carried a speaker up the stairs to the front door, where it was pointed, full blast, at the street.
A man unseen was enthusiastically butchering the Oasis song ‘She’s Electric’ in a Glasgow accent. They could probably hear him in Edinburgh. Passersby sniggered.
I looked at the blackboard sign outside Vibes. “Bad Decisions” was the name of its Monday jam session.
Whatever other problems the city may or may not have, a lack of humour isn’t among them. I walked back to my hotel, as admiring of Glasgow’s grit as ever.
