Right, let’s see what all the fuss is about. I jump in the car and drive along Paisley Road West and there it is. A big hairy man and a big hairy cow. The man, a grumpy-faced piper in a Jimmy Edwards tache, is standing in front of the cow and a perplexed stag. Behind him are the noble purple hills of the Highlands; across the road are the noble red and yellow letters of Farmfoods, Great Food, Amazing Prices.

This is Glasgow’s latest mural and I like it, sort of, bear with me. It’s not great art obviously: stick Lulu in there and you’d have all the top five cliches of Scotland; the knees aren’t great either. But I know this part of the city and it’s not the prettiest and it hasn’t been well served by development (and lack of development) and suddenly a drab wall across the road from Farmfoods has been transformed and is colourful and dramatic and eye-catching. Do I like it? Yes, I like it.

But not everyone’s happy, because we love a good moan. What’s it got to do with Glasgow? they say. Why hasn’t the money been spent on something more useful? Why not fix the city’s tenements rather than paint the ends of them? One curmudgeonly local said we should be focusing on the embarrassing state of the city instead and that he couldn’t imagine busloads of tourists coming to see a painting on the end of some flats. He may be right. He probably is.

But let me tell you about the effect of the murals. Walk around near one of my favourite pubs in Glasgow, the Viceroy in Kinning Park, and you’ll quite often bump into tourists looking for “the glass mural”. It’s........

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