Last week I got to hang out with Joe Mulholland. What a great guy. I have known him since I was a 14-year-old schoolgirl and he was the owner of the West End News.

Joe gave me my first job in journalism - a weekly column called Mainly For Young People. In retrospect, the title was a bit utilitarian but it was the 1970s and I was a scowling adolescent so it was not a bad fit. I can’t imagine many adults wanted to read my reviews of whatever weird Akron bands had been signed to Stiff Records that week.

Or, in fact, many young people.

In a delightful world-coming-full-circle moment, I got to write about Joe and his mission to fill the back end of Argyle Street with candy coloured buildings and stained glass.

The Glasgow Wrap

The man who built Finnieston's creative backbone

By Anna Burnside In 1990, when Joe Mulholland bought some tumbledown buildings behind Argyle Street, he was the talk of the lane. The guys who mended cars and parked their hearses nearby were astounded that a furniture maker had paid £18,000 for a roofless wreck…

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2 years ago · 8 likes · 1 comment · The Glasgow Wrap

This is pretty much the Platonic ideal of the kind of journalism I most enjoy: think of interesting person, spend time around them, write about it. I was actually disappointed when the word count was cut. 

Joe spoke non-stop for three hours. Some of it was unprintable on legal grounds. There was, over lunch, a joke that does not pass the 2024 taste test. But he made so many insightful points and had so many eye-popping stories that I could easily have written more.

Then there was my guided tour of the lane. I met a woman who canes chairs, another who upcycles nylon dressing gowns and a former Tennent’s lager lovely who now sells vintage clothes. It took all my strength not to buy a Chinese embroidered coat. 

We inspected all the decorative glass he has added to the refurbished buildings that are now home to yoga studios and potteries. Some are stained glass, others are painted panels. There are even whole doors with ornate glass details, rescued from Hyndland tenements. A contact rang to offer him 18 more of these while we were talking.

So far, so enjoyable. 

Then the piece came out as the Sunday long read on The Glasgow Wrap. It occurred to me, as I dripped out of my hot pilates class in one of these very studios, that I should be springing into action and taking digital action to get this masterwork out there.

I texted Joe the link. However he’s 83 and still uses a cheque book. No use relying on him to share it on LinkedIn.

Which is why I have spent a lot of today learning how to use Linktree and wondering if I’m too old to master Canva. My digital guide, who is 26 and infinitely patient, played a blinder and you can now access the piece via the link in my bio across social media. 

I’m conflicted about all this. I know I have to do this and there’s no point being a baby and expecting someone else to do it for me. I have worked with folk with that attitude and it’s a supremely bad look. But it is beyond fiddly and annoying. It makes me feel like an old person trying to get BBC1 on their new telly and this is not a feeling that I like.

I know there is no point banging on about the olden days and it’s almost as bad a look as stamping my foot and demanding someone younger and lower paid puts my pieces up on line for me. But I very much miss the days of filing for Joe on a portable typewriter bought with saved pocket money.

Is this the journalistic equivalent of reminiscing about living in a shoebox and being hit over the head with a newspaper for dinner? Probably. That won’t stop me adding that, after buying the typewriter, I taught myself to type using a book borrowed from Hillhead Library.

Anyway, please read about Joe by clicking one of the many links I have finally added to all my bios. They are in every corner of the internet. Show it immense love so that it might be the first in a series. I have lots of other ideas for similar pieces about the people who have influenced Glasgow. 

And please also enjoy this vintage review of a Finnieston restaurant, Usta. The owner rang the paper to complain that I hated men. I didn’t realise this was so obvious from my opinions about peanut butter in burgers.

But fair play.