Standing in line at the Stand bar! Whatever happened to scrums? - Susan Morrison

Staff would brace for the full onslaught of chest-puffed arm-waving, the face-pulling and those eejits who’d shout for half a dozen different wines, three Bacardi and Cokes, a whisky and when all were delivered in front of them, order five pints of lager. If you've just let out a strangled frustrated cry, you used to work in a busy bar.

Order has been restored to ordering drinks at the Stand Comedy Clubs

But what’s this? Queueing? Spontaneously? In Glasgow?

Last week we opened The Stand’s new venue and all weekend I watched Glaswegians meekly standing in line to get served, politely waiting until a member of staff became free and waved them over, like tellers in a Bank of Scotland branch circa 1995.

You don’t get queues in banks now. Well, you don’t get banks now. What happened to all those wee pens on chains?

The act standing next to me, the incredibly talented Mark Nelson, was appalled. What, he wondered, had happened to the time-honoured push-and-shove to buy your bevvy?

Character-forming, he called it. Turns out, Weegies are not alone. Geordies, the Glaswegians' spiritual cousins, have also started neatly lining up. I’ve seen it in the Newcastle Stand.

It might be a lingering Covid symptom. Perhaps people are uncomfortable with the old-fashioned rugger scrum, but I don’t think so.

Lockdown memories are fading fast, given the amount of unfettered sneezing and coughing I witness on Lothian Buses. Please, people, invest in tissues. Stop sharing your bugs!

Well, it’s probably for the better. The battle for the bar was a distinctly Darwinian experience, when only the fittest survived. They weren’t always the strongest.

I prided myself on frequently outflanking the bigger boys simply by virtue of being a whole heckuva lot shorter. They didn’t see me whip through the gap they left under their elbows. Still got the moves, if required.

In my younger days, when my hair was permed, Wham! ruled the charts and neon booze was the order of the day, a sure fire technique was the ‘fluttering lashes eyelock’.

Worked a treat on mildly squiffy chaps who thought they could try out chat-up lines while I stood beside them. What they didn’t realise was that I, like all my sisters at the bar, would immediately swivel my gaze like the gun turrets of a Churchill tank and re-calibrate to the ‘flirty lashes eyelock’ with the nearest barman.

Also, handy tip, I always took two empty glasses to return to the bar, which usually got the staff's silent thanks and moved me up in the pecking order a little.

Getting back out with Sheila's G&T, Pam’s Malibu and pineapple juice, Linda’s Pernod and blackcurrant and my Chardonnay was a challenge, but sharp elbows and high heels were handy weapons to get out with drinks intact.

The boys had their bar battle techniques. A young man of my acquaintance used to clear a path in London pubs by simply roaring ‘Two pints and a packet of salt ‘n’ vinegar’ in an accent so ferocious that City boys and even a mob of Millwall fans parted like the Red Sea.

Now they ask for trays and say excuse me and after you. They also bring their glasses back to the bar. Well, I guess it's some sort of progress.