I can’t remember the exact date I was last in the Sub Club in Glasgow but it was probably the same year I went to see Trainspotting in the cinema, and listened to Dog Man Star by Suede on the CD player, and watched This Life on the telly, and read about the divorce of the Prince and Princess of Wales and the birth of a sheep called Dolly, and thought that it might be a good idea to vote Labour. Different times, people, different times.

I’m pleased to say that, 30 years on, the Sub Club is still very much around and still recognised as one of the best nightclubs in the world, but its managing director Mike Grieve has something on his mind. Mr Grieve is the chairman of a group that’s been looking into Glasgow’s night-time economy and they’ve produced a report, the conclusion of which is brutal: the city does not have the infrastructure to properly support a night-time economy. In fact, it’s worse than that: the threats to Glasgow ‘after dark’, they say, are existential.

Anyone who’s regularly been in the centre of Glasgow knows this to be so. I’m thinking of the owner of a very famous bar and restaurant who told me his business is struggling and the city centre is ‘dying’. And I’m thinking of the director of a very famous chain of Italian restaurants who told me how’s he had to cut back on his opening times. And I’m thinking of the publican who told me that his Friday nights have pretty much collapsed: there was a time when he had to crow bar people out of the door after last-orders; now the pub can be half empty before 10pm. It’s something you hear all the time from people who run bars and restaurants in town. Existential is exactly the right word.

Mr Grieve’s report, Nightshift Glasgow,........

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