Ciao Belli. Hope all well and healthy, to quote Glasgow’s number one Crabshakk hater. Robbie’s flying solo here; Calum’s off gallivanting on the continent so we’ll be running a slightly leaner publishing schedule — more on that below.
But team absences hopefully won’t affect us for much longer, as we’ve got exciting news: we’re hiring a staff writer to join The Bell! All the info is available at the link below. If you want to change the way journalism is done in Glasgow, hold power to account, ask tough questions and tell incredible stories about our city — then please apply within. And if you know any intrepid reporters — share away. We’re hyped to grow our wee team, join us!
djstimms1
A big announcement 🚨
We’ve got more exciting news: we’re planning to launch a new sister title in Leeds! We'll be bringing our mix of investigations and human features to one of the UK's biggest cities. Think of it like The Bell’s younger brother in West Yorkshire.
To launch it, we need 500 people pledging to support the new title. We’re sure we must have readers with links to Leeds — could you help us get it going? Click the link below, and please share it with anyone you know in West Yorkshire.
It’s time for your briefing.
Glasgow in Brief
💰 The People’s Palace, which is currently closed for renovation until 2027, has a £12m shortfall in funding, according to the Friends of the People Palace and Winter Gardens. The museum and gardens shut in 2024 for £35.9m of essential repairs and a restoration project to “restore, reimagine, and enhance” the 1898 museum and glasshouse — improving accessibility, environmental performance, and community spaces. “[W]e were told that it was scheduled to reopen in 2027. We now know that this opening date will not be met,” the Friends of the People’s Palace (FPP) said in a statement released to coincide with the museum’s 128th anniversary. FPP understands that Glasgow City Council and Glasgow Life intend to apply for a further round of funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund later this year, with GCC pledging 44%. “This still leaves a substantial shortfall of approximately £12 million,” the statement reads. FPP says Glasgow Life is currently looking at different ways to attract this funding. Glasgow Life, however, tells us the £12m figure is a “fundraising target and not a ‘shortfall’.” This, they say, is the same kind of approach that was used for Kelvingrove Art Gallery, the Riverside Museum and The Burrell Collection refurbishments.
“[T]he People's Palace is not only significant to the residents of Glasgow but also stands as a major tourist attraction for the city. It educates visitors about the social, living, entertainment, and economic history of Glasgow, making its restoration to its former glory essential,” FPP told The Bell. The organisation says that Glasgow City Council and Glasgow Life are “profiting from events on Glasgow Green”. “[T]his money needs to be put back to the People’s Palace so that its educational value may be realised.”
🍺 A fortnight ago Overtone looked like a world-conquering brewery and Glasgow success story. As Chinese president, Xi Jinping, rolled out the red carpet for Keir Starmer, the BBC’s China Correspondent, Ayrshire-born Laura Bicker, was at a pub in the Hutongs, a traditional area in Beijing close to Tiananmen Square. She was there to speak to Overtone’s co-founder, Bowei Wang. “Fifteen years ago, when I was studying in Scotland, I said, ‘Wow, British beer is so good, I want to bring it back to China in the future’,” Wang told Bicker. “The beer is now a cross-cultural ale. It is brewed in Yoker in Glasgow, shipped to China and served from a bar in Beijing where scenes from the film Braveheart play on one large television while Elizabeth I is on another,” Bicker said in the article and accompanying BBC Radio 4 dispatch. Not bad for a micro-brewery established in 2018.
Two weeks later, Overtone announced it was going into administration. Staff at one of Glasgow’s specialist beer pubs sounded wholly unsurprised at the news over the weekend. Wang appears to have gone big on international trade, focussing efforts on exporting beer to China and opening two bars in Beijing, one of which looks to be a sizable taproom. The company’s liabilities already looked significant in its 2024 filings. This, coupled with the high costs of UK production and utilities and their Chinese export strategy, could help explain the administration. What the closure means for its China operations remains unclear. There is no mention of Overtone’s Chinese operations or Beijing bars in their accounts, suggesting these are separate entities. We contacted Overtone and Wang, but received no response.
🥁 We’ve been scratching our heads for the past few days, trying to work out what the millionaire businessman and drummer in the band Gun is up to. If you missed it, Paul McManus has made the somewhat startling decision to take up Alex Salmond’s legal case against the Scottish government. When Salmond died in October 2024, he was suing the government for misfeasance, a civil law term meaning the wrongful exercise of lawful authority.
Salmond had already sued the Scottish government over its handling of complaints made against him by two civil servants during his time in Bute House. The judge said the process was “tainted by apparent bias” and awarded the former FM more than £500,000. McManus, by his own admission, disagreed with Salmond’s politics, particularly on the independence question. He’d never met him either. Yet McManus “strongly believes” there was a plot against him. “If the Government can do this to one of their own, what chance do we, Joe Public, have if they decide to target us?” he said.
The Salmond estate has now assigned the businessman-cum-drummer the legal rights to fund and continue fighting the case. You might remember McManus from a recent Bell briefing; he was in the room with the Easdale brothers and Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar when the bus tycoons pledged £100,000 to Scottish Labour. When the Easdales made the first part of that donation last month, they said the rest of the money was conditional upon Sarwar putting his party in a “more Scottish-facing” direction. Three weeks later, Sarwar called for Starmer to resign.
McManus himself is a Scottish Labour donor, having donated £130,000 to the party in 2024. At the time he said: “I see no viable future for our children and grandchildren under the present administrations in Edinburgh and Westminster.” It’s not his first foray into politics; in 2022 he donated £40,000 with a promise of an extra £60,000 to the ‘LEZ Fight Back Fund’.
McManus is a rocker in more ways than one; he has a range of business interests, having sold Lanark’s Cloburn Quarry in 2025 to Wm Hamilton & Sons Ltd. McManus owns a number of other companies, including asphalt and aggregate businesses, many of which are run out of New Lanark. He’s spoken of his political donations being motivated by the birth of his grandchild, and a desire to build a better future for the next generation. Perhaps he fancies himself as a modern Robert Owen, the Welsh philanthropist and founder of the world famous model industrial mill community where McManus’ business operations are based.
🫖 There’s a major detail or two missing from recent news reports about the Mackintosh Tearooms “new name”, “new future” and “new era”. In short, ‘Mackintosh at the Willow’ will now be known as ‘The Mackintosh Tearooms’, two years after the National Trust for Scotland acquired the Sauchiehall Street premises. When it reopened in 2019 after a £10m restoration, it had to call itself Mackintosh at the Willow — despite previously having been called the Willow Tearooms, going back to 1903. Why?
Well, this is where it gets complicated. Anne Mulhern, who re-opened the Sauchiehall Street tearooms in 1983 (after it had been used as a retail unit), did not own the building. Mulhern ran the business for decades, and went on to open the Willow Tea Rooms on Buchanan Street in 1997 (as well as in Watt Brothers, before it shuttered). The Sauchiehall Street premises was subsequently acquired by Celia Sinclair of the Willow Tea Rooms Trust in 2014, who closed the building for significant, painstaking renovation truthful to Charles Rennie and Margaret Mackintosh’s original designs. Mulhern then opposed an attempt by the Willow Tea Rooms Trust to trademark the name.
In 2017, Mulhern won her battle against Sinclair, after the UK Intellectual Property Office ruled in her favour. This meant Mulhern’s tearooms were able to use the name of the original 1903 Cranston tearooms, while the original tearooms had to call itself ‘Mackintosh at the Willow’. Mulhern put the Willow Tea Rooms up for sale in 2019, and it was acquired by the Princes Restaurant group, who expanded to Edinburgh’s Princes Street in 2024. Confused? So are we!
❓The Glasgow Survival investigation hasn’t gone cold yet. Robbie has a new lead, or the makings of one at least. Do you know an Irish man who used to post on the messageboard NightB4.com? If so, email robbie@glasgowbell.co.uk
Stories you might have missed
💸 Glasgow seeks 'bailout' as refugee homeless cases soar, The Herald
👎 Self-styled nightwatchmen patrol a Scottish village. Their leader is a Nazi, The Ferret
🐀 Rats are on the rise! Glasgow Times
🤝 Glasgow's Merchant Square goes up for sale with £5m price tag, BBC News
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Read/listen/watch: One handful of earth, by Kenny Farquharson
Kenny Farquharson’s essay on the TMSA Folk Festival in Keith is one of the most beautiful things we’ve read this year. It’s poignant, probing and precisely the sort of writing that’s often lacking in the Scottish media these days (the article was published on Substack, rather than The Times, where Farquharson is a columnist). While the story is one of keeping music traditions alive in the northeast, last month the Traditional Music and Song Association of Scotland celebrated its 60th anniversary at Celtic Connections. While the trad and folk might be in rude health in Glasgow, the same cannot be said for Moray, where traditions such as “diddling” or mouth music have almost died out entirely. If you’ve not seen the recently unearthed BBC Archive footage of the 1974 Diddling World Championships, rectify that immediately.
We also rec:
- What does the future hold for Scotland's giant cranes?
- Cumbernauld’s Charles Jeffrey is queering Scottish nationalism
- Glasgow life, captured over 80 years of redevelopment and flux
Catch up and coming up:
- We were sniffing around the finances of Rutherglen’s Fernhill school over the weekend. “Excellent reporting by Calum and Evie,” reader Mark said in the comments. Over 100 of you agreed and joined our subscriber lists as a result. If you’ve not read it yet, it’s a bizarre story involving one of Glasgow’s biggest restauranteurs, an ice cream magnate, and a parent loaning Fernhill £1.8m before it announced its closure this year.
Calum Grewar
- With Calum away, we’re on a slimmed-down publishing schedule. We’ll be digging into the archives later this week, and republishing an originally paywalled story for everyone to read. This weekend, we’re exploring the city’s secret geometry.
Glasgow Calendar: All Access Comedy, the Stand
The Stand is celebrating its brand new accessible, step free venue with a night of all access comedy. The line-up includes Matt MacDonald and Rosie Jones. “A hilarious and history-making night of comedy from the best acts in Scotland and beyond, who you may not have had a chance to see before.” Wednesday 18 Feb, £11.
Another date for your diary:
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