Pizza pies, parking cries, and Ozempic opportunists

A good day to you, dear readers. Thank you for joining us for another Monday briefing. Over the weekend, Calum did some much-needed Christmas shopping, perambulated around Dawsholm park, had a cracking curry at Dumpukht Lahori on Paisley Road West, and enjoyed a few Bulgarian hymns sung by Govanhill Voices community choir at the Burrell Collection. Great ways to make the most of one of the wettest weekends he can remember (three soaked pairs of shoes and counting).

Robbie went to an Americana Christmas show, where revellers were treated to two hours of gags concerning a worrying lack of public toilets, cash-strapped council budgets and parking disputes (to clarify, this was in Peebles, not Shawlands). 

This week, the team is busy making sure our Christmas schedule is equal parts cosy, nostalgic and intriguing as ever. This will be our last Monday briefing before 2025, so thank you for a fantastic year at Bell HQ — none of this happens without you. We hope you enjoy the stories we’ve got lined up for you in the next few weeks and see you in 2026!

Glasgow in Brief

🚗 As we reported last week, a storm is brewing in the Southside over proposed parking restrictions. We know non-Southsiders may resent the attention the area within a mile radius of Queen’s Park receives from the council and the press (us included), but it seems that locals and businesses alike are digging their heels in, readying themselves for an attritional campaign of resistance. Plus, the charges started in the city centre, then the West End, so who knows where will be next after the south? Glasgow City Council is proposing to implement permits and paid parking for many of the streets in Shawlands, Battlefield, Strathbungo and Langside, starting in 2026. 

But, as the comments section in last week’s news edition showed, Southsiders and Glaswegians are not a monolith. Shawlands resident Paul described backlash to the proposals as “hysteria” and the current parking behaviour, which sees cars routinely blocking sightlines and even pitching up in the middle of roundabouts as “dangerous”. Other commenters said they had asked the council for increased parking controls, while others referred to car users feeling “entitled” to use public road space to park their private vehicles.

Since we highlighted the strength of public opinion, the Federation of Small Businesses released a report that says the council’s proposed restrictions are among the most expensive in the UK. In the FSB’s analysis, they cite the proposed 8.00am to 10.00pm paid period, which is already in place across much of the city centre and the West End, as one of the longest and most expensive policies outside of London, at £1.20 per 15 minutes. The report draws attention to the council’s blanket proposals which would see the largely-residential Southside join the West End as having the same parking tariffs as the largely-commercial city centre. The proposals, says FSB Glasgow development manager Hisashi Kuboyama, “threaten to choke off” the footfall that local businesses rely on. 

On top of the FSB’s report, residents will today deliver a letter to GCC declaring the plans “not fit for purpose”. According to STV, Blythswood legal big wig Aamer Anwar and his office have estimated that up to 80 small businesses could close as a result of the measures. An online petition calling for the full cancellation of the plans has now reached over 6,400 signatures. Summing up the opinion of many local businesses, restaurant Battlefield Rest posted not one but three videos to their Instagram satirising the proposals. The pick of the bunch is a skit entitled “If we ran our restaurant like GCC runs Glasgow”, in which a customer is refused a table because they don’t have a permit. 

🧑‍⚕️ Have you heard of Ozempic? It’s this exciting miracle drug, favoured by Tinseltown skinnyratti, that stops you feeling hungry and makes it easy to lose the weight you’ve always dreamed of shedding — this is how it's sold, at least. It’s also making Glasgow-based online pharmacy Simple Online a killing. The digital pharmacy tripled its revenue between the 2023/2024 and 2024/2025 financial years, going from £20 million to £66m, according to accounts filed in November. In that period, Simple Online, which has been lingering in the business for around ten years before exploding in the last couple, shut its only remaining bricks and mortar pharmacy and ceased all business operations with the NHS. It now deals exclusively in private online subscriptions. 

But a 220% revenue increase is only the start for co-founders Addy Mohammed and Ahmad Nassar. They announced last week that they were taking on a new Chief Growth Officer called Tushar Kaul, a former director of €2 billion-valued consumer corporation Agrolimen. Skinny waists; big moves. Meanwhile, the company’s waistline has expanded, which is accredited to the continued demand for Ozempic and competitors Mounjaro and Wegovy, which are all GLP-1 imitator treatments. GLP-1 is a hormone in your gut that makes you feel full. Over 300,000 Scots are estimated to be accessing the drugs from private providers, which is 5-6 times as many as those who access it through the NHS. For business/pharmacist opportunists like Mohammed and Nasser, the boom times are only just beginning. 

🍕 Pizza continues to dominate Glasgow’s food scene, as Sear’s opens its second Glasgow spot on Skirving Street, around the corner from Paesano’s third Glasgow location. The by-the-slice joint pipped Paesano to opening an Edinburgh outpost, although we don’t think DRG will be worried. Sear’s expansion mirrors a wider trend away from Neapolitan pies towards crispier NY-style, as well as a move away from whole pizzas entirely, in favour of slices charged at trumped-up prices (see also: Edinburgh’s most overrated slice, Civerino’s, which opened in Glasgow in 2023). We’ve also seen Anxious Pete’s open in the Barras, selling NY-style pies and slices. 313 Detroit on Cochrane Street serves exclusively by the slice, albeit deeper dish. Colour us cynical, but The Bell’s geometric analysis of a Sear’s pepperoni slice at £3.50, scaled up to 8 slices per pizza, means you’d be paying a price per-slice equivalent to £28 a pizza — rather than the discounted £20 charged for a full pizza. TLDR: by-the-slice is a bump, order a whole pizza instead. 

Sear’s was opened by “a trio of hospitality figures” in September 2024. According to Companies House though, only a duo were ever named: Paul Beveridge of Ramen Dayo and Tom Lauckner, a previous director of Piece. Sear’s menu, in fact, was painstakingly created by Darryl Leach, formerly of Baked Pizza Al Taglio. A Herald article confirmed Leach’s key role, focussing entirely on his pizza-making pedigree, with scarcely a mention of Beveridge and Laucker. No sooner had Sear’s opened though, than Leach suddenly left to start his own pizza business, Teglia, on Cathcart Road. Lauckner then resigned in December, making Beveridge the last of the trio left standing. Glasgow’s pizza wars are gathering pace, and casualties.

Stories you might have missed:

💻 Editor of Times and Sunday Times in Scotland is charged over ‘indecent communications’ , The Times (£)

🥛 Castlemilk community group publishes human rights declaration, Third Force News

💊 Cocaine worth £8m seized and three arrests in drugs raid, BBC 

🌆 Cumbernauld at 70: 'I think one day the town could become a city', STV  

🔫 MMA-fighter stepson of Lyons & Monaghan 'hitman' SHOT in Costa Del Sol 'executions revenge', Scottish Sun

🎥 Documentary about Home Office immigration raid on Glasgow's Kenmure Street to premiere at Sundance Festival, STV 

🧨 No plans to expand Glasgow fireworks control zones citywide, BBC 

🏠 Why do evictions keep rising in Govanhill? We dug into the data to find out, Greater Govanhill

🏛️ Bar-L’ joins the A list, Historic Environment Scotland

Read/listen/watch: Stanley Baxter remembered

At the peak of his powers, Scotland’s foremost impressionist, actor and comedian was commanding an audience of 20m across the UK — for good reason. Stanley Baxter, who has died at the age of 99, was a perfectionist, a wildly talented performer and a totemic figure of his time. “He was funny, he was mischievous, he was always incredibly clever and able to come up with comedy in a way that few people could even consider,” wrote his biographer Brian Beacom. The Guardian’s obit, meanwhile, looked back on his life and career, as well as his difficulty coming out, aged 94. “The Scottish star used his exceptional gift for impersonations to create genre-mashing specials that were as epic as the Hollywood films they parodied.” BBC Scotland will release a documentary on Hogmanay, Being Stanley Baxter, “an intimate portrait of a beloved television star”. If you can’t wait until then, look no further than Baxter’s 1976 Christmas Box. 

We also rec:

• Inside Celtic Fan Collective march amid 'battle for soul' 
• A timeline of Glasgow’s health history from 1175-2025

Catch up and coming up:

• Undoubtedly the highlight of last week, for Calum at least, was Gordon Cairns’ piece looking into the lives included in a book of mugshots from interwar Glasgow. Especially the compelling stories of Mildred Perpoli, the “petticoat housebreaker”, and Alexander Wilson, who was a criminalised gay man accused of blackmail, known as a “whitehat”. It’s a fascinating look into life at the time for Glaswegians on the edge of society. Gie it a read.

How a policeman’s 1920s photo album became one of Glasgow’s most unique hidden archives

From petty criminals to gay men, one officer accidentally gave us unrivalled insight into the people of the city’s interwar past

The BellGordon Cairns

• Somewhat overshadowed by the impassioned parking debate, Robbie penned a peculiar report into Glasgow’s first AI glamour model — Francesca “Chessy” Banks. He even struck up a conversation with her. If you want to know how the city’s side-hustlers can make money in the future, it’s worth checking out.

Headline of the week:

Scots hit-and-run driver who crashed into boys in Super Noodles dash avoids jail

Re:view: Still Glasgow, Gallery of Modern Art

Only 2% of Glasgow Museums’ total collection is ever on display at any one time. Everything else is stored at the sprawling Glasgow Museum Resource Centre, which houses somewhere in the region of 1.4m objects. This new exhibition, overlapping Glasgow 850 and GoMA’s 30th anniversary next year, is the result of a visit to the GMRC by Malcolm Dickson of Street Level Photoworks and curator Katie Bruce.

The result is a photography exhibition that gazes at Glasgow past and present through the lens of various photographers, from big names like Oscar Marzaroli, David Eustace and Alan Dimmick to Iseult Timmerman’s images of the Red Road flats and projects by Glendale Women’s Café and Romano Lav. There’s a picture of a carefree Paul McCartney, old tram conductors, an Alasdair Gray illustration and even a wee video of weans trying to hold their breath for the duration of the Clyde Tunnel.

Glasgow Calendar: Christmas picks

• Where better to watch Vivaldi’s Four Seasons than the candlelight environs of Glasgow Cathedral this Saturday. November 20, 7:30–9:30pm. Tickets from £22.38.
• Christmas with the Wurlitzer at Pollokshaws Burgh Hall Wednesday, Dec 17 from 8 pm to 10:30 pm GMT. From £11.55
• Cativity: cat mediums channel your pet cats and perform a low budget nativity. Tuesday, Dec 16. Tickets from £10.46

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