Peter Ross: Vocal heroes - uncovering the popularity of karaoke at one of Glasgow’s iconic pubs

Some extraordinary singers strut their stuff at the Horse Shoe Bar’s karaoke nights in Glasgow

‘T HIS,” says Raymond, “is where the magic happens.” He gestures towards a tiny stage in the corner of the pub, maybe eight feet by five and raised just a couple of inches off the floor, within staggering distance of the ladies loo. It would not rival Caesar’s Palace for glamour. Yet this, indeed, is where the magic happens – seven nights a week at the Horse Shoe karaoke.

The Horse Shoe Bar is one of Glasgow’s iconic pubs, and the karaoke an institution within it. Raymond Fitzpatrick has been a compere here for most of his adult life, and next year will celebrate his 20th anniversary. That’s two decades of cuing up backing tracks for every Chrissie Hyndland and Dusty Springburn keen to tell the listening tipplers about the brass in their pocket and the windmills of their mind. He loves it, Raymond. Just look as he rolls up a trouser leg and reveals the proof of his devotion – a tattooed horse shoe with the melody to Robbie Williams’s Angels running through it.

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Robbie is just one of the celebrities with whom Raymond has sung over the years. They did Take That hits. A bigger thrill, though, was duetting with Ally McCoist, a personal hero, on Joe Cocker’s Unchain My Heart. He remembers, too, Kerry Katona getting up and doing Summer Nights. “She warned me she was rubbish,” says Raymond, “and right enough, she was.”

They have high standards at the Horse Shoe. Some great singers come here. Not famous. Ordinary folk with extraordinary voices. Raymond is no slouch himself. You want to hear his Paolo Nutini. This is also a place where the karaoke dead are remembered and honoured.

The name Willie Wales still rings out. “He must have been well in his seventies and he used to do My Way, the Sid Vicious version,” says Raymond. “He was a legend in Glasgow for it.”

And did Mr Wales sing any other songs? “Oh, he did. I’m Too Sexy. What a showman.”

The karaoke starts at 8pm, except on Sundays – the most popular day – when it’s 5pm. On the night I visit, the town’s hoaching with works nights out. They come piling into the Horse Shoe on the stroke of eight, loosened ties and party frocks, drouthy for vodka and Irn-Bru. “Right,” says Raymond, “let’s get this show on the road.”

First up is Sally Loy. No messing about. Straight in there with Don’t Stop Believin’. Sally is 45 and from Auchinleck. She came up on the train with her friends, work pals from Tesco, but if you’d told me she flew I’d believe you. Sally is a wee ball of energy. Bobbed hair, floral dress, shiny black boots. She has a brilliant, throaty, fags ’n’ bevvy voice, giving it, “Just a small town girl/Living in a lonely world ...” She plays air guitar during the solos and bends into Raymond’s face to deliver the line, “Some were born to sing the blues.” She is quite astonishingly good.

Afterwards, having a smoke outside in Drury Street, Sally says she’s been into Journey since she was 16 – “That’s my most favourite song and band in the world” – though she also has time for Meat Loaf. So is Don’t Stop Believin’ her party piece? “If I’ve got a wee drink in me, aye. That stops the nerves kicking in.”

Sally clutches my arm. “See the Glee version? I hate it. Hate it.”

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Back inside, Pat McGuire, a Horse Shoe stalwart in his fifties, is explaining the appeal of these nights. “A lot of people knock karaoke, right? But in these times, with people not working or struggling, this is their wee five minutes of fame. It makes their week.”

Pat first came to the Horse Shoe towards the end of his first marriage. His second wife wasn’t really into the karaoke so his visits lessened. But now that marriage is over too, so he’s back and giving Space Oddity laldy. He’s keen on respect, Pat. He remembers the days when a performance would be received in silence and applauded at the end. Now everyone gabs away, and he doesn’t like it. Women, he feels, cannot handle their drink. “They should mibbe just have a Sweetheart Stout or a wee sweet sherry at a funeral.”

Pat’s other quirk is that he doesn’t like to sing songs that other people sing. He used to do Hoochie Coochie Man, but now a guy called George has started singing that, so Pat gives it a bye.

There is no shortage of singers. People keep coming over to Raymond and handing him slips of paper with their name and chosen song.

Sometimes, he says, they can be waiting hours to perform. “I tell people don’t wait till they’re drunk to put their name down, because by the time I call their name they might need helped up on to the stage.” It is vital to achieve a perfect alcoholic equilibrium – half-cut to avoid anxiety, but not so plastered that the performance is impaired. Needless to say, not everyone gets this balance right. One young woman – a swaying vision in polka dots – performs a profane version of S Club 7’s Reach, of which the best that can be said is that we now know how Jerry Sadowitz might have covered it. She wanders off into the crowd, still singing and swearing, and Raymond has to reel her in using the microphone lead like an angler landing an especially tricky trout.

Next up is Teresa. She’s a social worker from King’s Park, 47 years old, mad for The Beatles, the young Paul McCartney tattooed on her right leg, but here tonight to sing Lily Allen’s It’s Not Fair, which she does brilliantly. The lyrics, lamenting bad sex, have the mild-mannered, golf-jumpered fellow in the front row fair spluttering into his pint. Teresa sings It’s Not Fair for the craic, but also because she reckons the many women in the audience will relate. “I am married 28 years, separated three, and I’ve had two relationships,” she tells me. “That song says something to about 70 per cent of females who’ve been to bed with men who are rotten. The other 30 per cent are very lucky.”

Which brings me to John Binnie. He is 73 years old, a retired baker, dressed immaculately in double-breasted pinstripes, hair slicked back, gold watch and shoes shining. Mr Binnie is Mr Karaoke. On Friday evenings he tours six or seven pubs and clubs, including the Horse Shoe, favouring each with a song. On Saturday afternoons, he visits the Grant Arms in the hope of finding a hen party to entertain. Sunday afternoons see him at the Old Ship Bank on the Saltmarket, where senior citizens of both sexes perform the hits of the 50s and 60s to live keyboard accompaniment. “I don’t drink and I don’t smoke,” he says, “but give me a microphone and I’m away in another world.”

Mr Binnie is, perhaps, the most extraordinary live performer I have ever had the fortune to witness.

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His signature song is Bad Case Of Loving You, which he knows backwards, meaning he doesn’t need to read the scrolling lyrics, leaving him free to bump and grind, strut and frug in the direction of those female members of the audience whom he judges will not mistake him for – in his own words – “an old pervert”. His pièce de résistance is delivering the line “No pill’s gonna cure my ills” while yanking, from his jacket pocket, a blister-pack of Viagra. This gesture is met with shrieks of delight from the crowd and when the song ends Mr Binnie returns to his seat, a conquering hero.

“These are no’ just for show,” he confides, indicating his little blue pills. “I’ve got a girlfriend. It doesn’t all stop at 23.”

Some place, the Horse Shoe karaoke. Not at all like The X-Factor. For one thing, the repartee is very different. “The Beatles!” Teresa shouts from the audience, hoping Raymond will break the habit of a lifetime and play a song by her favourite group. “Naw,” says Raymond. “The Beatles are pish.” You don’t get that with Louis Walsh.

Also, and this is important, unlike a TV talent show, the karaoke does not feel in any way fake. The emotion is real. The people singing these songs do so because they love them.

At one point Raymond duets with a man called Lex Crawford, an accountant suited and booted straight from his work, on Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me. Here are two men pushing 40, everyday guys, standing in the corner of a pub, by a sign advertising pies, and you could swear – if you shut your eyes – that it really was Elton John and George Michael. The whole place is swaying, hands in the air, a tear in many an eye. It is, undoubtedly, A Moment and a great example of the transformative power of music. As one of the punters puts it: “If you sing well at the Horse Shoe, you feel like a superstar.”

There is a theory that karaoke suits Scotland because it is a contemporary version of the old tradition of doing a turn at Hogmanay. Maybe so. Certainly, everybody gets a turn tonight. Buxom Debbie, newly graduated, doing La Isla Bonita. Big John singing Bad Company. Don from Uddingston celebrating becoming a grandad with a heartfelt version of Mr Brightside.

Best, though, to give the last word to Raymond, for whom karaoke is not just his living but his life. It is after midnight and he is in philosophical mood.

“What would I be if I wasn’t a karaoke compere?” he muses. “Probably a virgin.”

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