The vodka girls show just why we are top of the yob league

Published on Thursday 11 May 2006 00:28

IT IS becoming increasingly difficult to connect the two faces of Britain - and I'm not referring to John Prescott's off-diary activities. This week saw the UK declared the yob capital of Europe. I can't say I recall any broadcast footage of the competition (will the Italian team now present their menacing hand- gestures and broken bottles? Thank you. The next heat will be seven-a-side brawling).

But any lingering doubts I may have harboured about our national superiority in matters yobbish were dispersed by a Channel 4 documentary concerning 15-year-old girls on the point of expulsion from school. While various adults made concerned noises, the girls themselves preferred to be frank. No promises of reform or extra homework. That night they planned to go out and get "really drunk", they said. One admitted she had a litre of vodka and that this would have to suffice as it was "still a school night". A Friday or Saturday would naturally require a lot more than a litre.

Just in case the viewer might consider these comments prov-ocative bravado, CCTV footage of (different) teenage girls vomiting in the street and being lifted unconscious into ambulances was offered as evidence. Though no-one who has walked through a city centre recently would have disputed it anyway.

The infamous Glasgow drunk who was always slurring "Whit are you looking at, Jimmy?" is now likely to be 16 years old and wearing pink jeans and a ring through her navel. I doubt that this is what the tourist board gurus had in mind when they insisted it was essential for Scotland to modernise, and abandon the old clichs. It seems we modernised the clichs instead.

SO, WHILE it is now considered undesirable for schools to stress competitiveness - no first prize for the egg-and-spoon race, or bottom of Division III for maths - the media has never been more crammed with numbered lists. If it isn't Channel 5's 100 best dishwashing moments, it's the ten most embarrassing comments ever made in an airport taxi, or the 50 crucial items to pack in your holiday holdall (for a list of the 100 best holdalls please turn to page 602).

Perhaps there is a triumphant posse of perfectly-trained lager louts celebrating our recent triumph in the European yob contest, just as I hope they are celebrating today in Rothesay.

You remember Rothesay? Its elegant Edwardian facades, the Winter Gardens and the esplanade? It was here that "Doon the watter" Clyde coast holidays required the very best regalia. Chiffon frocks, straw hats and very probably black patent sand-shoes.

This was where I learned some of the bitter economic lessons of my youth and had my first grasp of real greed - scooped up with a long spoon, the kind which accompanied a knickerbocker glory at Zavaroni's Cafe. I was never ever allowed a knickerbocker glory. I was a two-scoops kid. So Rothesay taught me longing as well as greed.

Most of the scant attention lavished on Rothesay in the last several years has been condescending. The sort of comments whispered about dowager duchesses. "Lovely in her day, but so faded . . ."

However, the laurels are out again for Rothesay, this week crowned Scotland's best seaside resort by Holiday Which? magazine.

What a rush of pride that brought to my Glaswegian heart. After all, Stella McCartney chose to marry the magazine publisher Alasdhair Willis here only three years ago in tribute to her mother, Linda - Bute is only an hour's boat trip from Kintyre, where the family spent childhood holidays.

MORE bizarre, the tiled gents' Victorian toilets on Rothesay pier have been described as the most beautiful in the world and probably the only to feature a guestbook signed by Prince Charles. And even if the CalMac steamers now transport seal-watchers, cyclists and hikers instead of bucket-and-spade families, this still surely denotes a genuine renaissance.

But that's when light dawned. And not, in picture-postcard style over the misty hills of Bute.

The international event which Scotland wins unchallenged year after year is the comparison marathon. Are we better now than then? Are we the worst in Europe - or the best in Strathclyde? Tell us quickly so that we can massage the figures and reinterpret the facts. Tell us so that we can console and justify ourselves.

Hello? Is there anybody there with some more figures?

Hello?