Minutes of Annual General Meeting  2021    

This meeting was cancelled due to the Covid-19 lockdown

This meeting was cancelled due to the Covid-19 lockdown

This meeting was cancelled due to the Covid-19 lockdown

This meeting was cancelled due to the Covid-19 lockdown

We don't have a minute of this meeting as it was held online but we can report that Judith Bowers allowed us to re-broadcast a highly engaging and entertaining video that had been made of a presentation she had given to a recent International Conference on Music Halls in Seattle USA. 

Whilst recounting her discovery of the Theatre above a false ceiling in a large store on one of Glasgow's major shopping streets, she did not spare the delegates (or indeed our members) the ordeal of hearing tales of ordure slinging at acts deemed to be less than entertaining by the tough Glaswegian audiences.

She outlined the development of the Music Hall and its various additions - it included a zoo at one time, and introduced us to some of the famous people who'd graced its stage. Stan Laurel of Laurel and Hardy fame learned his craft at the Britannia Panopticon.

We're very grateful to Judith for helping us to cut our teeth in the world of Zoom meetings - somehow we had some international guests dropping in.

The original idea for this meeting was that Artie and Rab would speak about Glasgow's influential folk music scene in the 1970s. However, when they chatted about it they asked themselves why "Twa Fifers" really had any business speaking about Glasgow music. Notwithstanding that they had both been involved deeply. Rab lived, worked and played in Glasgow. Artie went so far as marrying into Glasgow's folk royalty when he said "I do" with Cilla Fisher. 

So the topic for the evening developed into Artie interviewing Rab but it was not less interesting because of that. Rab had worked as a civil servant in Glasgow and played in the local clubs whilst doing so. As his musical career developed, playing with some of the stand out musicians of the time, "civil servanting" fell away and he became a full time singer song-writer alongside luminaries like Gerry Rafferty. Rab became a Senior Music Producer at the BBC.

Ian Todd's books based on his childhood in the (now mostly demolished) Parliamentary Road area are popular with the city's readers. Ian now lives "up north" so Zoom was really the only way we would get him to the club. It was our good fortune that he agreed to appear on screen for us, he spun us some really interesting background stories around the material in the books - the doocot was a real favourite.

As Ian says in his Glasgow Chronicles Facebook - Looking for a cracking good read? Why not check out some of the novels in The Glasgow Chronicles series. As can be seen by the reviews on Amazon, you won't be disappointed. All 13 books in the series are available in ebook format for all devices such as Ipads, Tablets, Smartphones etc. The first two in the series, Parly Road and Run Johnboy Run, are also now available worldwide in paperback from Amazon.

Because we couldn't meet for an AGM we decided to have another Ordinary Meeting and we were very blessed to get one of Glasgow's leading Italian restaurateurs, Marco Giannasi to tell us about Glasgow Italian Resturant Culture through his family's roots and its rise in the city.

Early in the 20th century his grandfather arrived and worked his way up from the basement preparing fish to owning his own cafe and then restaurant. His father built on the progress with the famous L'Ariosto Restaurant as does Marco now with The Battlefield Rest.

"The Rest" is history - quite literally - it's a formerly derelict tram terminus which Marco has restored and which now houses a rather excellent, relaxed restuarant serving delicious authentic food. The building itself is a wee bit confusing - it was opened during the first world war but has distinctly Art Deco elements, it's elongated tiled exterior for example, in its design. Other parts, perhaps the cupula, suggest the earlier Art Nouveau movement. 

It's within club members' memories that what are now the fire exit doors were once a kiosk selling newspapers sweeties and, of course, cigarettes..