Published: Friday, 26th October, 2007 13:10
News girl's coffee with Rod Stewart
By Jane McCance
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The other week I was given lunch at Rogano, the famous Art Deco fish restaurant in Glasgow’s Exchange Square. As my lunch date and I were ushered in through the front door, Rod Stewart brushed past us on his way to leave.
“No singing, no dancing,” the 'Current’ and I whispered to each other (our little catchphrase, the 'Current’ being far too prone to bursting into song at the slightest provocation, although not, thankfully, into dance, but it’s a threat which I’m nipping in the bud).
Rod (being his own man when not with Penny) was whistling a song as he passed, and as he caught my eye (yes, he did) I wondered if he was going to ask me to repay the debt I owe him.
A good few years ago I lived in Mount Florida on the south side of Glasgow, just along from Hampden Park, with someone who looked like a benign bear with slightly misplaced eyes called Rupert. We were regulars at Cafe Amalfi, and one Saturday or Sunday I was there alone, pouring over the papers and probably an unsuitably greasy plateful of egg and chips. The time came to leave, and I didn’t have the correct amount of cash. No problem, we all but lived there in those days, so I said I’d drop it in later or the next day.
A voice from behind me spoke out, in just the way a girl sometimes thinks would be rather
nice, offering to pay my shortfall. I turned around and it was Rod Stewart, who was playing a concert that day at Hampden. I said thank you in my most charming way, and added that although I knew I wasn’t his usual type I’d consider a request for my company over dinner. No, of course I didn’t. I just said thank you.
In the final year of my studies I spent many evenings in the preserved Art Deco interior of Rogano with Rupert, ordering Daiquiris and pretending we lived in 1930s London, and a couple of years later, over coffee and tablet in one of the booths, my ex-husband and I began to fall in love.
But my first trip there in several years got me thinking not about the past, but about the future of the place I now call home, and the crumbling Art Deco facade at the bottom of my street.
The austerity and hardship caused and imposed by the First World War was the main catalyst for the opulent stylistic movement of Art Deco, a period in architectural history which defined the Jazz Age of the 1920s and 30s. I’m told that Largs was once a town rich in buildings of merit, among them the Viking Cinema, the Moorings, the railway station, and the Marine and Curling Hall.
My family are full of stories of their youth spent in and around their bricks, but most famous, best loved of all, stood Nardini’s. Palm trees on the prom, violet creams, tall glasses, ropes on the windows, favourite seats and knickerbocker glories. Treats. What was Nardini’s? It was glamour.
I remember waiting one winter afternoon for that same Rupert. Rain was lashing down, the palm trees bent double by the storm, and I chose a table next to the internal shop, beneath a display of cigars. I opened my newspaper, ordered a coffee and entered a moment of romance where I was removed from the ugly truths of the pubs and clubs of my contemporary life. I felt sophisticated. Even on the day before the great icon was cruely stripped of her accessories, the original interior of Nardini’s still held that sense of sophistication.
Aubrey was a small baby at that time, when the plans for the restaurant and cafe were pinned to the walls. I made a long entry in the comments book - my background in fine art leaving me incredulous that such a tragedy could be planned, yet aware that my relative inexperience in business could be making me ignorant of the needs of commerce. One of the new directors made a point of finding me the next time I was there for coffee, and with these words rendered me speechless: “Just look around you. It’s dated.”
Perhaps one day in Scotland those with money might employ those with sensitivity and the relevant education to work alongside them in projects such as this. Nardini’s seemed to me to be destined to become a copy, a pastiche of its former self, a chrome-fitted Glasgow pub-clone, when all it needed was a pianist to play some 20s music and maybe a new kitchen. Granted, anything would have been better than what we are left with: the heart-rending sight of the deterioration of a building which once reminded us all of a time when more than profits were at stake; when the lifting of the human spirit still mattered.
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