Antisemitic rant shocks Glasgow cinema audience

Dear readers — welcome to your Monday briefing, the equivalent of your lunch break mate who is bursting with Glasgow gossip. 

How about that brawl outside the bare knuckle boxing fight at the weekend? Shockin aye? That George Square’s still not open yet even though the council said it’d be ready in October. Mad, int’it? Did you hear about that hooha at the GFT?’ More on all these stories below. 

Over the weekend, we had a belter of a double-header from veteran journalist Malcolm Jack about the abandoned Botanics railway station. What’s left of it lives underground and has been out of use now for longer than it was ever functional. Malcolm told the story of its many lives since, as an illegal rave site, Hollywood set and even the cause of a big bust-up between West End residents and a controversial hospitality magnate. 

He even got another scoop out of the story, discovering a secret music video that was illicitly filmed on set of the doomed Batgirl film in 2022. 

Oddly, our link to that exclusive wasn’t working yesterday (a Warner Brothers intervention?), so we’re resharing it here: it’s too good to miss, and contains the most footage of the Batgirl set to ever make it into the public domain.

The secret Batgirl music video Warner Bros doesn’t want you to see

A rare glimpse inside the making of the cancelled blockbuster

The BellMalcolm Jack

Campaign update: seven days to glory or failure 

It’s. The. Last. Week. Of. Our. Campaign. Robbie’s hyped, Beth’s fretting and Calum’s eye is twitching. 

We cannot believe how quickly time has passed (perhaps the 10 hour days have contributed to this), but now the end is in sight. We’ve welcomed 707 amazing, civic-minded individuals to The Bell familia since launching our campaign on 14 October, which has blown us away. We’re so excited to share our journalism with everyone who’s come on board. 

But we’re also so damn close to our ultimate goal of 1,000 new paying members. Two hundred and ninety-four is the magic number. If 293 people become fully fledged Bell members and decide they want to be part of our ambitious project, we’ll hit GO on our five pledges to make Glasgow better.

Two hundred and ninety-three is an agonising number because it is so near and yet so bloody far. We need 42 Glaswegians a day to sign up if we’re going to hit target. There is every chance we fall short, which would mean we don’t make good on our pledges, experience the mightiest case of cringe the west of Scotland has ever seen, and guarantee a fairly mince Christmas for team Bell.

So the fate of The Bell. In a strange journalistic maul, we need you to subscribe and cajole your friends into doing so too. We need our loyal readers to join arms and drive forward the renaissance of local news. Will you push The Bell over the line?

It’s not just our campaign that ends on Sunday evening. Our amazing discounts do too. They are:

£65 for a full year of The Bell — saving £40 compared to paying monthly

£2.99 per month for two months — a £6 reduction on our usual price, which will return next Monday. 

So what are you waiting for? Save us some stress. To those who’ve joined so far, throughout the whole two years of Bell life, thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

Now, your Monday briefing.

Glasgow in Brief

Antisemitic rant at Glasgow Film Theatre 

An audience member reportedly delivered an antisemitic tirade during the closing credits of a screening of Naza, an investigative documentary looking at Israel’s war in Gaza, at Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT) on Sunday 25 October. According to witness Peter, the man — who looked to be in his “early 60s” — stood up after the credits rolled and announced he “had to speak out”. He then called Jewish people “an accursed race,” reports Peter, and that “Hitler was right”. 

We know we've been peppering your inboxes with chat about our campaign, so I'll keep this one short.

The Bell can only exist if readers decide we're worth paying for. That's what the campaign is about: making sure we're here to stay in the city we love so much. Join us, make us fulfil our pledges, and be part of the revolution to defibrillate local news. Remember, there are discounts!

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