Glasgow City Council has dropped the ball when it comes to civic events in the autumn and winter, leaving GlasGLOW the only game in town, writes Herald Columnist Marissa MacWhirter.

When summer staggers to an end and Glasgow’s autumn and winter events programme arrives, I ready myself for a flurry of headlines about “chaos” and “mayhem”. Why can’t Scotland’s largest city get these mid-sized festivities right?

To be clear, I am not talking about the serious kind of chaos that results in tragedy, but rather the type of shambles that inspires an outpouring of angry posts on community Facebook pages or the local Reddit thread.

Glasgow has a knack for playing host to events that leave parents fuming and children in tears. The kind that families shell out for, spending far too much per head only to find their £40 went to the marketing budget, and they are left queuing for hours to look at a warehouse or park sparsely scattered with props.

The infamous Willy’s Chocolate Experience (that we are all sick to the back teeth of hearing about) is the benchmark for viral disaster. It involved a sparsely decorated warehouse, AI ads, and parents so enraged that the police were called. Right around the time my annual bout of seasonal affective disorder is kicking in, private events are ready to take Wonka’s place as Glasgow’s biggest blunder – none has been able to snatch the Wonka crown. Yet.

The first of this year was Fan Frontier’s GlasGHOST, which ran at the SEC from October 24 to 26. It was supposed to be “the ultimate Halloween........

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