Cliff Hanley's Dancing in the Streets
One of the sharpest, funniest books ever written about Glasgow
Freshers Week, Glasgow University, 1973. Getting on for a half a century ago, and I was swilling about Gilmorehill with hundreds of other hapless 17-year-olds, simultaneously thrilled with myself and absolutely terrified. Swaggeringly confident second-and-third years told us world-weary tales of drinking, political activism and drinking. The Christian Union bussed prospective ultra-Calvinists out to Loch Lomond for a barbecue, possibly the only beer-free event of the seven days. And Cliff Hanley spoke at a debate.
I can’t remember who else was on the platform, or what the motion was. Only that the diminutive Clifford Leonard Clark Hanley (five foot three in his hand-made brogues) gave one of the wittiest, most awe-inspiringly impressive public speaking performances I’d ever heard. And I’d competed in the Daily Express Schools Debating Competition, by the way (knocked out, first round).
I was vaguely aware of Cliff (goatee, receding white hair, long at the back; a kind of leprechaunish Soviet intellectual type) from TV and radio and the dubious fact that he’d written the words to Scotland the Brave; but the only newspaper columnists I read were Jack Maclean and Iain Archer in my dad’s Herald. Cliff at the QM, though, was something else. Fast, literate, screamingly funny and utterly Glaswegian. What else? Can’t remember.
When I could afford it, I bought his book Dancing in the Streets, first published in 1957. Slivers stayed with me all down the decades. An elegantly brutal takedown of the 1955 Billy Graham crusade at the Kelvin Hall. Hilarious and note-perfect recollections of his childhood in the Gallowgate and then Shettleston, and most of all, a seductive picture of what it was like to be a journalist and radio broadcaster. All written in crisp, sardonic prose that flowed better than any non-fiction I’d read up to that point.
At least, that’s how I remembered it.
Time passed. Lots of it. I became a reporter, a columnist, a broadcaster, an author. Cliff appeared, towards the end of his life - he died in 1999 - on one of my Radio Scotland shows, and while elements of his verbal skill were still evident in his write-and-read that morning, the sprightly verve had all but gone.
The other day, something prompted me to search him out online. I knew about The Taste of Too Much, his coming-of age-novel that became a staple of school curricula, but the vast range of his work was a surprise - numerous pseudonyms, thrillers under the name Henry Calvin that were hits in the USA, scripts for famous films like Seawards the Great Ships, and gags for some of the biggest comedians in Scottish history, like Jimmy Logan and Tommy Morgan. So I ordered Dancing in the Streets from Amazon and prepared to be let down. Of the writers who thrilled my teens (Alistair MacLean, Hammond Innes, Desmond Bagley, John Creasey) only MacLeans’ early work still pulses with energy. But still, it was worth a try.
Dancing in the Streets remains an absolute belter, as fresh and classy as it ever was. As a snapshot history of Glasgow, from the 1920s onwards, it’s invaluable. Hilariously funny, pin-sharp in its capture of dialect, and unlike other books in the ‘jeely piece’ genre, unsentimental. Written when he was at the very peak of his journalistic powers, it’s full of sharp observation and forensic detail. Things you rarely read about now - the Indpendent Labour Party in its dying days, all park bench trainee speechifying and Saturday socials; a deft portrait of Jimmy Maxton, and what it was like to be a conscientious objector in World War Two, when all your brothers were serving and friends were dying overseas. TB and cancer, plucking the most talented from imminent success. Art and alcohol. Sex and the lost showbiz of the Glasgow Empire.
And it’s so stylish. One of the stars of the Daily Record in his day, when the best tabloid features were written with intellect and flair, Cliff is the enemy of dull. His prose sparkles, converses, leads you like an old pal (often to lost pubs like the Corn Exchange or ones that are still thriving, like the Kirkhouse in Shettleston).
And of course, on re-reading, I realise how influential it was on my own life. My own scribbling. The arc of a career, though mine nothing like as stellar. But as the chapter entitled ‘The Thin Red Line’ begins:
“A writing job isn’t the same thing either as fame or the top of the tree, but it’s better than working.”
Read it if you can. It’s a lot funnier than yon Shuggie Bain.
Looks like I have the same copy as you. I have just started Shuggie Bain so will have to read Dancing in the Streets after ;-)
A seductive piece, Tom.
Although my knowledge of Glasgow in the past goes no further than once playing the Glasgow Empire, some fifty years ago, I shall buy a copy - for the purposes of entertainment and of education.