Always look on the bright side of life. Those are the words that I live my life by even if spelling them gets more than a bit challenging in the doom laden dampness of Glasgow. However, surely a visit to the Oran Mor on a Saturday night would cause my spirits to soar?
Almost, as watching Gavin James use his Dublin gingerness to charm a west end of Glasgow audience into singing along with his not too fast not too slow songs was nearly enough to induce an epiphany. Either that or the double espresso that I mainlined on the way there had finally kicked in.
As a cultural observation, you always know when you are amongst civilised people. Even with a half hour wait until the headline act, not one single person in the audience produced a crack pipe. I mean, how gosh darn upmarket is that?
With little fanfare, the headline act duly took to the stage and, in two shakes of a really cute bunny rabbit’s tail, Ingrid Michaelson also had the audience singing along to her songs. In fact, by the time she was three songs in, she had to pretty much rush into all her songs before the audience sang each and every one of them for her. She had that girl next door charm working overtime for her throughout her set and even the fact that she had written a song for Cheryl Cole – that, alone, makes her way cooler than, say, Joseph Stalin – failed to divert the gathered masses from their adoration and, as I looked at the assembled skinny lattés mouthing each and every word, I realised that preaching to the converted must indeed bring its own rewards. She encored her way out the building with “Be OK” and, by that point, even I wanted to stroke a really cute bunny rabbit.
I asked the man in the kebab shop if he had any bunny rabbits. He replied to the affirmative and I left with a large donner kebab.