She's No Bobby's Girl!; Call that music? asks our Susan Maughan fan

THE loud music industry rarely impinges on my life. The celebration of the 50th anniversary of the British charts last week made me think back to the days I used to take an interest. The invasion of Barcelona by the MTV Europe Music Awards ceremony reminded me of the lavish food and drink opportunities that the record industry affords even the averagely diligent freeloader.

It is quite breathtaking to realise quite how rapacious the industry is and how conceited and vapid are its practitioners. And I'm not just saying that because I didn't have a pass with access all areas. The awards ceremony in the Palau Sant Jordi clashed with Blackburn-Celtic on the telly anyway.

A small but totemic illustration of the conspicuous consumption on display was the fact that the event presenter, a rapper by the name of P Diddy, had imported his personal florist from the US to decorate his dressing room. P Diddy's trailer was one of 72 large vehicles brought in for the comfort of the many artistes at the ceremony. Mr Diddy is the artist formerly known as Puff Daddy, a name discarded after he had some local difficulty involving the alleged appearance of a gun in a nightclub.

It would have been nice to blag entry to Mr Diddy's post-awards private party, if only to inquire if he was aware of the connotation his new identity has in Scotland. And I would not have turned down the opportunity to get up close and personal with Atomic Pussy or get down and dirty with Christina Aguilera, who had no arse to her leather breeks and is obviously into chaps. I considered claiming to be the music critic of the Fife Free Press to secure an interview with bass guitarist Guy Berryman of Coldplace, who was apparently born in Kirkcaldy, and I contemplated researching the repertoire of Mary J Bilge to offer you dear readers an insight to her searing soul music. But I couldn't be arsed.

Nor could I be bothered using my freeloading skills to infiltrate the many List D parties taking place all over Borecelona. The only event I really wanted to attend was the MTV dinner in Gaudi's Casa Battlo. The purvey was by Ferran Adria of El Bulli restaurant. He is widely regarded as the world's best and most inventive chef.

I'm sure Senyor Adria's soft-boiled quails' eggs in a caramel glaze, his wild strawberries in Campari and his deconstructed paella were wasted on the music-trade bigwigs, who would have been happier at McDonald's. P Diddy was offering admission to his private party to ladies prepared to take their clothes off at the MTV ceremony. I was hoping to gain entry through a contact in music PR.

I ended up partying not with P Diddy but P Thistle. Making my way through the mean streets of Borecelona, I passed Scobie's Irish bar and spotted a customer wearing a Jags strip. It turned out to be a Glasgow bloke called Greg, a Scotland supporter on his way to Portugal for the game on Wednesday. I had met Greg at the World Cup in France in 1998 and he greeted me with "Tam Shields, I thought I might meet you in Barcelona." Greg is on a somewhat circuitous route to see Scotland, with stop-offs in Barcelona, Madrid, Salamanca and Porto before getting to Braga, where the match is being played.

As ever, where even one member of the Tartan Army is involved, there was singing. Most of it was provided by Ursula, the lovely Irish duena of Scobie's. I could be biased, since Ursula was plying me with Guinness as well as song, but she is a much better chanter than any of the young ladies performing at the MTV gig.

As you might expect of an old buffer, I much prefer the early days of the music biz. As a callow schoolchild of the 1960s I used to scan the charts in the NME with great interest. But even then music was only a means to an end. A knowledge of popular beat combos came in handy when chatting to fellow pupils of the opposite sex.

One of my great regrets in life was never getting the chance to discuss with Louise Bird, the Princess Diana of second year at Bellarmine Secondary, the relative merits of The Beatles and the Rolling Stones. To this day, Ms Bird has never written, phoned or faxed. That I never had the courage actually to talk to her may be a factor.

Music was a simpler business then. Dean Ford and the Gaylords (how's that for a name from more innocent times?) provided the live music at St Mary's church hall in Pollokshaws. Susan Maughan was our sex symbol. I wonder how Bobby's Girl would have looked in a pair of leather chaps.

It's not everyone who has an eponymous bar. Kelly Cooper has. It's a shame Kelly is no longer using her mairrit-oan name, as the place would have been called the Kelly Cooper Barr Bar, which sounds a bit like a snatch from a Beach Boys number.

The Kelly Cooper Bar is in Bath Street, Glasgow. I'm sure it is very stylish and not all fiveminutesago.com, a phrase Kelly once used as a synonym for passe. Kelly has a bar named after her because she was, and very likely still is, an It Girl. I would like a bar named after me even though I am merely A Nit. So if any public-house conglomerate is interested, the brand name Tom's Bar is available.

There already exists a Tom's Bar, although it says Press Bar above the door. It was the haunt of journalists from the old Herald building in Albion Street. I realised I had been spending too much time in this pub when a young journo said he thought I actually owned it. The bar is known as Tom's after Mr Tom McEntee, the legendary publican who founded it as the Express Bar in 1928.

So what will be the ambience of my very own Tom's Bar? Morose, probably. Des, a scion of the McEntee dynasty, oft opined that for a chap who made a living writing a supposedly humorous column, I could empty his pub in 20 minutes. The lugubriosity of Tom's Bar would be alleviated by conversation on arcane and obscure topics only, such as Mark Twain's regular use of the word gallus and here's us Glaswegians thinking it belonged to us. When the drink starts to flow and the evening progresses, a degree of animation will be permitted. There will be a separate section for clientele who only ever talk about football.

A programme of lively pursuits is planned. Every Tuesday will be Philosophy Night. On Wednesday it is Ailments Night, when customer can discuss their operations. Thursday is Sixties Night, when we will all sit round and try to remember what happened during that swinging decade. And don't forget that every night is Care In The Community Night - Tom's Bar will open for the longest hours possible. The aim is to have the customers fall asleep over their dominoes at 3am, just like the pubs with late licences during Glasgow's Year of Culture.

We will maintain the tradition of chucking-out time. At one minute to 11pm we will be serving pints. At one minute past, the staff will be screaming at customers to get out. The doors will be wedged open to allow in freezing winter air.

Staff will shout: "That's your time. We've got your money, now feck off." Once the pub has been cleared, customers will re-enter by a side door for a lengthy lock-in.

Tom's Bar will welcome young people. This will enable customers to complain bitterly that they "cannae get tae the bar fur thae effan students and where do they get the money to buy so much bevvy anyway" and to ask each other into which body parts these young yins will next be inserting with pieces of metal.

On the plus side, these students are usually good crack, and the money Tom's Bar can make from selling them alcopops will subsidise cheaper Guinness for the codgers.

I speculated last week on how a Cruelty TV channel could find new ways to entertain by exposing ordinary citizens to humiliation in return for a few moments of fame. But you can't improve on reality TV.

Who would have thought of putting a nervous and vulnerable youth who suffers from attention deficit disorder into the highly charged environment of a top restaurant kitchen? Chef Jamie Oliver and his fellow producers of Jamie's Kitchen did. Michael Pizzey, the young man in question, has appeared hunted, haunted, and quite uncomfortable as one of the disadvantaged troup of trainee chefs coping with the challenge of vying on prime-time TV for a job in Jamie's new restaurant.

It will be great television when poor Mr Pizzey is removed from the course in a forthcoming episode for being angry and accident- prone. Mr Oliver is an honourable young man and has arranged for him to receive anger management counselling with a view to returning to the culinary fray. A happy ending for Mr Pizzey would prove that the Jamie's Kitchen exercise is not just about filling TV time and selling books.

Copyright 2002 SMG Sunday Newspapers Ltd.
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