LET'S start by getting one thing straight. Glasgow is a great place. Having lived there almost all my adult life, I bow to no one in my affection for this clapped out old workhorse of a city.
I loved it back in the days when a smiley yellow Mr Man was, somewhat inexplicably, the symbol of its determination to transcend its industrial heritage; I loved it when it won the European City of Culture title and went on to prove it deserved it, a
nd I love it now it prepares to host the Commonwealth Games in 2014, despite boasting the second worst health statistics in the developed world.
I love the sweeping view from the Kingston Bridge, Finnieston Crane and Glasgow Green. I love the city's mythology; its contradictions; and its 'a-cat-may-look-at-a-king' cockiness.
For the few years I was exiled in Englandshire, I pined for its architecture, its lack of reserve and its ability to embrace both haute cuisine and the humble fish supper. Back then, a few bars of Hue and Cry's 'Let Glasgow Flourish' was enough to reduce me to a quivering, sentimental wreck.
That said, I am not blinded by my emotions. I have a close friend's eye for the city's many flaws: its violence; its tendency to live in the past; the way it fetishises ignorance and its impulse towards self– destruction. I could go on.
So it was with some surprise I read last week that the Lonely Planet Guide, a publication for which I have a great deal of respect, had included Glasgow in its list of the top 10 cities in the world. According to the company's Best In Travel 2009 book, its highlights include pan-fried scallops caught off the nearby coast and "defining experiences" such as cruising down the Clyde by powerboat and adding your voice to the Hampden roar. "Forget about castles, kilts, bagpipes or tartan," the publication says. "You come for the cocktails, cuisine and designer chic (plus the legendary native wit)."
Now, I know the Lonely Planet guide is no advocate of traditional tourist hotspots. It eschews the safe, the pretty and the kitsch, preferring cities that are vibrant, bold and 'edgy'. That's why, along with Glasgow, its list includes not Salzburg, Prague and Florence, but Beirut, Chicago, Warsaw and Mexico City. But there's 'vibrant' and then there's 'loud', there's 'bold' and then there's 'pushy'; there's 'edgy' and then there's 'keeping edgy', which is what Weegies do when they're up to something dodgy – in other words, often.
To me a hip night out involves eating tapas, dancing until 4am and going for hot chocolate in a square tucked off the Ramblas, not picking your way through piles of sick and discarded kebabs, while drunken girls lie crumpled in doorways and neds demonstrate their 'legendary wit' by shouting: "Hoy hen, do you fancy a shag?" My idea of living dangerously is cruising the cannabis coffee shops of Amsterdam, not trying to second-guess which of the shell-suited natives is most likely to knife me or finding myself in a queue with rattling addicts on a trip to the chemist.
Admittedly, tourists who stray no further than the city centre and the West End might well be impressed by the city's distinctive style and the range of eating places on offer. Those who've come in search of designer clothes shops will be spoiled for choice, while Glasgow also has one of the most fertile music scenes in Europe.
But what if they inadvertently pitch up the Premier Inn in the New Gorbals which, despite all the cash that has been poured into it, is still a bit of a scary, urban wasteland? Or if they venture out to Shawlands, where the once thriving shopping street is now peppered with empty premises and pound stores?
The only way a trip along the Clyde could be described as a "defining experience" is if you travelled to the city with the express intention of finding out how a waterfront regeneration should not be done, or if you stopped off at the science centre (although, to be honest, most cities now have something similar). What aesthetic pleasure you could derive from the incoherent mishmash of developments that have been thrown up along its banks is anyone's guess. If Lonely Planet wants to recommend a waterfront, it should be pointing tourists towards Newcastle/Gateshead where you can amble along both sides of the Tyne, taking in sculptures, cafés and the truly inspired Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art along the way.
Culturally, too, Glasgow seems to have lost its way. Where Berlin has 170 museums to choose from, Glasgow has just a handful, and most of them seem tired and underfunded. The Museum of Transport is in stasis as it waits for its move to Yorkhill Quay in 2011 and some feel the recent multi-million-pound revamp of Kelvingrove – the jewel in the city's crown – has turned it into a cultural amusement arcade. The city's sprawling parks are still something to boast about.
But as for its leisure facilities, I don't know where to start. Run-down swimming pools with flumes that are never in use because they can't afford to pay the requisite number of attendants; sports centres without so much as a café.
No, if I was a tourist in search of a city break, I don't think I'd pick Glasgow. I still love living here, of course. I just wish it could recapture some of the optimism it oozed in its Garden Festival days. Perhaps the Commonwealth Games will help. I hope that if the Lonely Planet researchers come back in 2014, the city will truly deserve a place in the top 10 cities in the world.
In the meantime, however, I don't want to hear from smug Edinburghers who want to add their tuppenceworth to my literary demolition job. For all its faults, Glasgow's still my city, and I won't stand for anyone criticising it, but me.
