During a family weekend in Glasgow recently, my daughter insisted we visit a pub that – I’ve since learned – the Strathclyde police once tried to close because it was considered so violent.
It’s called the Brazen Head, like the famously old (and unconnected) establishment in Dublin, except that this one is pronounced “Brazzen Heid” in the local dialect.
So did we have to mind our heids while there? Was the air of menace palpable? Not at all. Judged admittedly on a brief experience in early evening, it would have to be on a shortlist of the friendliest pubs I’ve ever visited.
No doubt our accents helped. The Brazen Head is in the Gorbals, a once teeming industrial district, where more than 70 per cent per cent of the population is of Irish descent. It is also, by extension, a shrine to Celtic football club.
In the corner where we sat, wall decorations included a copy of the 1916 proclamation and a Starry Plough, flag of the Irish Citizen Army.
But the dominant feature was a portrait of Henrik Larsson, a dreadlocked Swede revered in these parts for his 174 goals in 221 Celtic games - including a thing of beauty against Rangers in 2000, in which he first nutmegged a defender and then chipped the goalkeeper with a smiling nonchalance, the memory of which can still make grown men cry.
It was a quiet corner, where the only other drinkers were two men of a certain age, James and John, who turned out to be former school friends but were sitting alone in silence at separate tables.
When the former heard us talking, he suddenly announced: “My father was from County Monaghan.” So I said: “I’m from County Monaghan”. “He was from Carrickmacross,” James added. “So am I!” I told him.
Soon after that, he mentioned having five sisters, and when I said I had five sisters too, John started humming the theme from The Twilight Zone. We were all friends then.
John was a butcher, we learned during a wide-ranging conversation. But despite intense questioning, he refused to be drawn on the exact ingredients of haggis – something none of us had tried yet but planned to - apparently on the grounds that we were better off not knowing.
We had only dropped in for the proverbial one drink. Then, while we weren’t looking, James quietly visited the bar and four new pints of Guinness appeared before us. Later and just as stealthily, I tried to buy him whatever he was having – whiskey and Iron Bru, it looked like – but he had pre-empted the move.
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“Jamesy doesn’t want a drink – he’ll be away home for his tea now,” the barman said. So before leaving, we bought John a pint and then fled before the hospitality escalated. The place was filling up and the conversation was spreading in all directions. If we hadn’t got out in time, we’d still be there.
The Brazen Head’s notoriety reached crisis point back in 2003 when police asked the city licensing board to shut it down. Problems had included the fatal stabbing of a man nearby, for which one of those convicted was a bouncer at the pub.
But the licensee protested that police were blaming him for the problems of the Gorbals as a whole, probllems which included drugs.
“What do they expect me to do – walk customers home?” the licensee asked in 2003. And he had allies in some local politicians, including the then Scottish culture and tourism minister, who wrote a letter opposing the closure. The Brazen Head stayed open.
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In a piece headlined “Inside the Gorbals’ hardest pub”, the Sunday Times made a fact-finding visit soon afterwards. Among other details, the reporter noted that souvenirs for sale included one playing up the customers’ image: “Save your teeth – use a Brazen Head bottle opener.” Overall, though, he too found the place harmless.
Glasgow in general trades on a tough reputation. Its name is an adjective for such things as the “Glasgow Smile” – a knife inflicted scar that extends from mouth to ear. But stravaiging around the streets on this my first visit, I enjoyed its gritty charms at least as much as those of its posh cousin, Edinburgh.
On a local wall last week, one of several anti-drug slogans read: “Put your wains above cocaine.” (For those who don’t speak Glaswegian, wains are children.)
To stravaig is a Scottish and northern Irish verb meaning to wander. And Stravaigin is also the name of a Glasgow restaurant where I finally got around to trying haggis – an upmarket version of it anyway.
It was like a crumbly white pudding but seasoned to within an inch of its life and delicious. In a humbler café elsewhere, later, I also had “dirty fries with haggis”, which might be my new favourite junk food. If there’s anywhere in Dublin that serves this delicacy, I’d like to know.
