A perverse irony is evident in the opprobrium that gets heaped on Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street year after year in what seems to be an endless cycle of melancholy. In the digital age where no news is local, the articles and essays about the most renowned boulevard in Scotland are all bouncing around the planet.

Among the UK’s most charismatic and historic thoroughfares, perhaps only Piccadilly Circus has a greater social media presence. If you’d never visited Sauchiehall Street you’d have pause to wonder why so many people care about this anointed urban realm. Andrew Neil, one of Britain’s most influential and successful journalists, was the latest to despair of the apocalypse that’s befallen this street.

On a weekend visit to Scotland, Mr Neil took to social media to express his anger and indignation at what had become of this street. “I drove down Sauchiehall Street today — at least for as far as I could go before it becomes a building site — for the first time in over a decade. It used to be world-famous, Glasgow’s equivalent of Oxford Street. It’s now a shambles and a disgrace to Scotland’s biggest city. A national scandal.”

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Here and there amongst the responses were the usual deflections from the SNP’s scarecrow wing. Yet, only a fool would dismiss his views. For a start: they echo those of the overwhelming majority of people I know who feel an emotional and historic attachment to Sauchiehall Street. I’ve also heard views similar to Mr Neil’s from people who live outside Glasgow. They always ask me the same question: “What in the name of God has happened to........

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