Glasgow

Billy Connelly said something once:

“Comedy, like drama, is about conflict, and Glasgow is my city of conflict. The views, the sounds, the smells of these streets are jammed with memories of being cold and warm, in love and heartbroken, crying with laughter and regret. I love Glasgow, but that love has always been matched with an urge to leave . To see over the horizon and that pull has made me a proud citizen of the world. Yet there’s always been a string in my heart that I’m glad pulls me back to where I’m from. To all the things that made me good and bad, Scotland - it’s a beautiful place.”

It has stuck with me for the entirety of my life. Those words have immortalised themselves, forever etched into my brain somewhere. Even reading those words now makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand upright. Never have I felt words that make up the very fabric of my own DNA more like those, and from one of the most beloved voices in all of Scotland.

So we start there. Here. Glasgow.

It is a melting pot of a city, in its own right. I can smell it as I stand here on Bothwell Street, the scent of the rain that has just finished, still lingering in the air. It battles with that other distinct Glasgow smell for me; that warm, yeasty scent from the breweries that are scattered landmarks across Glasgow’s skyline. That unmistakable smell that paints over the entire city by the evening, and makes me feel warmth and a sense of melancholy, all at the same time.

I grew up here. From about the age of one until I was twenty-two years old, Glasgow was all I knew of the world. Like Billy, it saw me through love and heartbreak, laughter and upset. It built who I am today, another one of its famous ships, ready to set sail from the River Clyde, built by the hands of men and women hardened by life, but who can still laugh at it all.

Glasgow is a working-class city. Once known for its high poverty rate through the 1950s/60s, the city became a thriving epicentre of shipbuilding and manufacturing. Unfortunately, by the 1980s, those industries had fallen apart, thanks to Mrs Thatcher, which subsequently led to high unemployment and social unrest. But Glasgow has always found a way to bounce back.

Arguably, it is going through its own struggles at the moment, after the hardships of the pandemic all but decimated some of its famous high streets. Most recently, it suffered a heartbreaking blow when its Victorian-built Central Station caught fire, causing its iconic dome feature to collapse.

And yet…

Glaswegians (or “Weegie’s”) are known officially across the world for being one of the friendliest people in the world. They can laugh at themselves and each other, no matter how hardened they might be from the weather or their circumstances. They have a humbleness and humility that cannot be replicated anywhere else on the planet, in my opinion. They are willing to help anyone if they truly need it, say hello to strangers, and are famously known for welcoming refugees with open arms, making them part of their communities. This is what caused the coining of the term “refuweegie”. I am sure that the sentiment is currently under threat due to the political landscape of the UK, but Glasgow will find a way through it, as it always does.

Much of my childhood was spent at my grannie’s house - a small flat in a tall, high-rise block in Govan, where that strong brewery smell first became intoxicating to me. I would spend my weekends sitting on her balcony, watching all of Glasgow exist below. I would listen to my mum switch accents from her “posh Scottish” to the rougher, harsher one of my Granny MacDonald’s, communicating in a speak that belonged entirely to that place, to that history, to her.

People often compare Glasgow to Edinburgh, which is almost always met with my scrunched-up face if I’m in the vicinity. Edinburgh is a stunning city, and an absolute must-see, but Glasgow is where the heart is. (I say all of this with a lightheartedness, just in case any native Edinburgh dwellers are reading this).

As for me, my life didn’t actually begin here. I was born to two Scottish parents in San Diego, California. That exact sentence has been my starting line for as long as I can remember. This weird sort of moment that makes people go, “Oh”.

I didn’t live there long; within the year, my parents moved back to Scotland, and eventually divorced one another, but that sense that part of me is Californian has never left. In fact, for years, I was convinced that I was not meant to live in Glasgow. My eyes were always on the horizon, always telling myself that one day I would move back there, that I would become the California surfer dude that I knew I was meant to be.

That I would finally feel at home.

For the longest time, Glasgow was my city of conflict. I never really felt like I belonged there. What my life was meant to be didn’t fit with the hazey, rain-filled streets, the pale, hardened faces, the dreamers who had lost their way, and accepted their fate. I was meant for something else.

That is when I decided to blow open my world and make it bigger. I moved to London when I was twenty-two years old and began working professionally as an actor. Suddenly, I was living a life that I had always dreamed of. I was on stage performing for hundreds of people every night and getting paid for it. I was falling in love with a different man every Monday and letting them break my heart by the following Sunday. Little Chris from Glasgow would have never believed it.

Then I moved to Los Angeles. Suddenly, everything I had ever been working towards, that horizon that I was reaching out for with both my hands outstretched, was no longer in the distance. I was here.

For all the problems America has, of which I am reminded every single day, there is something that clicks into place for me when I am here. Dreamers gather in a place like California. After all, that was the whole experiment a few hundred years ago, right? People searching for a new land, a new life for themselves, a better situation than the one they were in. Maybe it was that exact feeling I always connected with.

Quite unexpectedly (or perhaps not), I have since then found myself in rooms and places that I could never have imagined. My job has quite literally become travelling the world with my partner and documenting our crazy life together. Turns out there are a fair few people who want to watch it unfold, which feels equal parts mindblowing and terrifying. That world that I blew right open when I was twenty-two has now let in a much bigger one than I had first anticipated.

And yet, having now lived on the West Coast on and off for a couple of years, the call of Scotland has always been there. The first answer I have when people ask who the hell I am is always, “I’m Scottish”, and quite proudly, too. And if I am not careful, that familiar homesick feeling of Glasgow creeps up behind me when I least expect it, ready to pull me right back to the place that I vowed I would always leave.

That tension, that feeling of being in between two places, has always been inside me. It’s what creates this dichotomy of real, grounded honesty within myself, and the aspirational dreamer that has the entire world that he wants to bear witness to. Maybe sometimes I long and ache for the smallness of the life I had growing up. Maybe I am meant to close that chapter of my life once and for all, and succumb to the crazy, wonderful one that I get to lead now. Or maybe, just maybe, I am meant to stick to being in the middle of it all, forever trying to figure it out.

Whatever the answer may be, one thing is for sure: I’ll find it with honesty and humility, for as long as I have a voice.

Chris