Some years ago, I was developing a slightly high-falutin documentary about masks and the weird role they’ve played in human society. The mask is a curious anthropological artefact. Wearing one is meant to change you. In ancient cultures, masks helped you transcend the human - they allowed shamans to commune with the gods on the spirit plane. In classical Greece, early actors wore masks to become the characters they played on stage: gods, monsters, heroes; a man could play a Queen.

In modern societies, the mask became inherently unsettling. It brought to mind robbers, assassins, hooded Klansmen, terrorists in balaclavas - and disease. To be unable to see the face of another human being troubles us. Understandably. Who really is behind that mask, we wonder. Humans, rightly, fear uncertainty.

In recent times, though, the mask was mostly tamed. We wore them as fancy-dress, put them on children at Halloween. The mask was defanged.

Yet after pandemic - when the mask reasserted its ability to frighten and divide - something changed. Where once those intent on harm and upset risked arrest and social condemnation for their behaviour, now they went masked.

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In Glasgow, of late, we've seen more than our fair share of masks. The dregs of society - the so-called Old Firm ‘ultras’, as they’re termed - parade in masks trashing the city and frightening citizens.

And, as we saw last week, far-right and neo-nazi extremists wear masks as they run riot through the city terrorising........

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