The Last Night at Tom’s: Glasgow's legendary Press Bar to close

The Press Bar in Glasgow’s Albion Street, was put up for sale by owner Vincent McEntee three years ago and finally a buyer has been secured.

Originally called the Express Bar when opened by Vincent’s grandfather Tom McEntee next to the Daily Express building in the 1930s, his sons had a thistle logo placed over the “Ex” when the newspaper group pulled out of Albion Street in 1974, and re-named the place the Press Bar. But to the old hacks who still frequent the howff, it will always be Tom’s.

And in the past three years, the place has played host to several “Last Night of Tom’s” celebrations. Sadly, however, in the very near future, the final “last night” will take place on what promises to be an emotion-packed occasion, when memories, pleasantries and some genuinely outrageous tales will be shared. Normally hard-hearted hacks from as far apart as Tayside to Bangkok, including the French Riviera, the Canary Isles and England’s south coast, may not be able to suppress a tear as they clear the decks to join their former colleagues in the famous Albion Street pub.

Following the death of Tom McEntee, a champion golfer who won many trophies, the bar was run by his sons Leo, Des and Gerald. Subsequently, it was taken over by Leo’s son Vince 17 years ago. Vince, 55, wants to move on and as none of his three grown-up children wishes to take on the business, he decided to sell up.

Tales surrounding Tom’s are the stuff of legend and several habitués remember with great fondness the time passed at the bar.

I can lay claim to being one of the very few journalists – if not the only one – who worked for four newspapers that were “serviced”, as it were, by Tom’s: the Daily Express, Scottish Daily News, Sunday Standard and Evening Times.

The first time I entered the bar was in 1967 as a young messenger, dispatched to seek and return a recalcitrant reporter late in filing his copy. It was a busy place and later, when I was a regular customer, it might be four-deep at the bar yet Leo, Gerry, Desi or one of the staff would spot you coming in and call: “Wee Grouse and a pony, eh?”

A pony was an illegal measure of beer that filled a whisky glass.

One story that eclipsed the tardy reporter was that of a photographer, who shall remain nameless, who had been sent to Glasgow’s St Enoch Station, closed by the Beeching cuts of 1966, to take a picture of the last train leaving the platform.

The Express had a regular feature in those days, Photonews, a picture special to report on a story of particular graphic interest.

Tapping his fingers nervously as edition deadline approached, the picture editor was eventually confronted by a sheepish photographer who admitted he had missed the last train – he’d spent too long quaffing in Tom’s next door to get himself in the right frame of mind for the big job at hand.

Photographers were a breed of their own and their exploits often beat those of other editorial members.

Sub-editor Ed Bonner, of Coatbridge, who began at the Express in 1970, remembers two more anecdotes about the same snapper.

“That time when Leo McEntee offered him an evening’s free drink if he would do a streak. The bold snapper promptly hared it to the darkroom, disrobed then charged bare-arsed about the editorial floor before presenting himself in the scud to mine host.

“If you sent him to picture the Queen, you’d have to paint her head in, they used to say. And Jack Mid (the eccentric one-off Jack Middleton, another snapper) doing an impression of a man hoovering the floor in Tom’s, imitating the drone of a vacuum, so as to successfully make passage through the throng to the bar.”

The Press Bar’s link to the newspaper business was cut in 2000 when the Herald and Times moved to Renfield Street. And when the place finally closes it will be very much the end of an era. Profits associated with it have dwindled, too, in comparison to the old days when it was said to be one of the top five earning pubs in Glasgow.

During the short-lived Sunday Standard days, I was in a conference with deputy editor Ray Perman when a call was put through for him. It was an old Fleet Street chum who was in reception. Ray told him to go into the bar next door and we’d meet him later.

The look of incredulity on the guy’s face when Ray and I joined him at the packed bar was priceless. He said: “I’ve been reporting all over the world and been in some of the richest spots – and yet I’ve never seen so much cash change hands as I’ve witnessed in the last hour.”

These days are long past, but the memories live on. And it wasn’t just hacks who enjoyed the evenings in Tom’s. Many well-known faces would turn up to enjoy the craic. The included Hollywood star Christopher Walken who soaked up the atmosphere on one occasion – his mother was a Glasgow woman.

The Irish poet, songwriter and author Dominic Behan, brother of Brendan, was a frequenter of Tom’s when he lived in Glasgow’s south side with the equally revolutionary Scots poet Hugh McDiarmid.

Another literary visitor was Paisley-born author Gordon M Williams, whose 1971 novel The Siege of Trencher’s Farm was turned by director Sam Peckinpah into the violent movie Straw Dogs, starring Dustin Hoffman and Susan George.

A famous local face at the bar was Upper Clyde Shipbuilders hero Jimmy Reid, who spoke at rallies to save the workers’ co-operative-run Scottish Daily News in 1975 following the Express group pulling out of Albion Street in favour of Manchester. Reid became a columnist at the Herald in later years.

The pub itself won more fame when it featured a couple of years ago in the BBC series The Field of Blood, starring David Morrissey, Peter Capaldi, Ford Kiernan and Bronagh Gallagher, and based on Denise Mina’s newspaper-based thriller.

And the names of some of the genuine patrons of Tom’s read like those from a Damon Runyon tale.

There was Harry The Cat, who had a weekly bar bill of “over a ton” back in the early 1990s; Peter The Peddler, who would flog you razor blades and sundry other consumables while you quaffed; Wee Jackie, the kenspeckle street-corner news vendor who required a liquid cure for his roughened larynx caused by shouting out the latest headlines; the Skipper, who might possibly have preferred to be on a boat; and the Flying Tomato with his “plenty o’ watter in it noo” for his whisky. All dead now, sadly.

Oh, and the Dangerous Brothers … who lived to contest another day.

All the above are snippets from a long-gone era and the Press Bar has modernised, like other hostelries, over the years. Back in the day there was no women’s toilet, and if a female required to use the facilities, a male chum had to stand guard at the door of the gents’ so she could have a moment’s privacy there.

In fact, the spot where the women’s toilet is now was the scene of another anachronism.

Years back, two uniformed police officers would appear in the shadows at the back door not long after closing time and, by way of a thank you for keeping the bar crime-free, would be treated to a couple of large ones for their perceived trouble.

On one occasion when a crime really was thought to have been committed, it turned out to be a laughable misunderstanding.

Ed Bonner again: “A journalist, who had cashed so many cheques at Tom’s, was called in by his bank manager, who feared his client was being blackmailed by a certain T McEntee.”

Another memory from Ed, who recently retired from the Daily Record Sports Desk: “During the frequent IRA bomb hoaxes of the 1970s, staff were evacuated from the Express building, only to seek shelter and fortification immediately next door in Tom’s.”

Latterly, the atmosphere has been much more civil on the whole – partly due to the steadying influence of the occasional female clientele.

Former sub-editor on the Evening Times Boo Paterson, now of Newport on Tay, says: “The Press Bar may have once been a beery boys’ club, but it certainly isn’t now.

“I think it’s important that it includes everyone.”

That said, one of Boo’s memories concerns another “character”, Brian Sykes, business editor of the Evening Times.

Boo, now an artist and blogger, recalls: “Brian was known as the Brigadier, because of his military bearing and his occasional references to his previous Army days. It was his birthday ... he had a pint of whisky that he sipped from 5pm opening time till closing – and it never emptied.”

That same Brigadier bowed out in the most unusual manner.

In 2008, Brian was diagnosed with throat cancer and decided he wanted to be the first person to attend his own wake. Boo Paterson and I attended the unique occasion along with a few other old stagers.

It was a great laugh all round. Sadly – inevitably – Brian died within a few weeks of his own wake. Yet – and this is the wretched truth – two of the gang who joined us that fateful day died before Brian did.

So now those who are left await another wake soon. This time for Tom’s Bar itself.