Paul Fitzpatrick: May 2024

It would appear that the Germans have a word for everything – whilst we’d say that someone is ‘reveling in another person’s misery‘, they’d simply call it schadenfreude, the literal translation being harm-joy.

When we say that a person has ‘put on a bit of weight due to comfort eating’ our German cousins call it kummerspeck, which literally translated means sorrow-bacon!

The Germans are masters at compounding nouns/adjectives/verbs to create words and even have a beefy 79 letter word in their dictionary – (Rinderkennzeichnungsfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenüber), which I believe is something to do with the labeling of beef.

As local colloquialisms go I’m not sure we can compete but growing up we had our own lexicon, some words remain whilst others are sadly redundant.

Words like ‘Bam’ (short for bampot or bamstick), ‘Fandan’ and ‘Gallus’ are not descriptive in the way that German words are and will require a degree of explanation if you’re not from these parts.

Bam is an easy one to define, it describes someone looking for trouble, a nutter, “that guy’s a bam watch out for him”

Likewise, ‘Fandan’ is a term for someone you find annoying or who is a bit full of themselves, “for god’s sake pass the baw ya fandan”

Gallus on the other hand is a bit more nuanced.
In the 70s if you were wearing the right clothes and had the right haircut you could often be described as gallus, but we all knew that there was more to it than that, sure, appearance was part of it but it was more about attitude and demeanor.

For example….

Bryan Ferry was stylish but Rod Stewart was gallus.

Sartorially speaking, Rod couldn’t compete with Ferry (who could?) he wasn’t better looking (again, who was?) and he wasn’t any more talented, but (and this is the early to mid 70s Rod we’re talking about) he had a je nes sais quoi, a glint in his eye that made boys want to be like him and girls want to be with him, (if proof required think back to the number of feather cuts sported in Glasgow 72-74).
Whilst Ferry was smouldering and immaculate on stage, Rod larked around, often out of tune, playing football and drinking from the bottle with his Faces bandmates.

Ferry was cool but Rod was gallus.

Similarly, in the world of football Denis Law was the king but Slim Jim Baxter will always be known as the gallus one.
Born within 6 months of each other, Law had the better career by far, breaking transfer and scoring records, playing for some of the biggest clubs in Europe, gaining over 50 caps, winning awards and scoring over 250 career goals…. and he even had a Rod Stewart haircut.

Slim Jim was a different proposition, as talented as they come but his talent didn’t match his commitment.
No matter, his legacy is assured in these parts forever for a match that took place 57 years ago.

Known as the Scot who taunted and tormented the English world champions in their own backyard in 1967. Baxter had the audacity to play keepy-uppy during the game, taunt Alan Ball about his high-pitched voice, (referring to him as Jimmy Clitheroe) whilst leading the team to victory.
The consummate professional, Law wanted to hammer the English by scoring more goals but that was of no interest to Baxter who was more interested in humiliating them and taking the piss.

Law was respected and admired but Baxter was the gallus one and he was loved for it.

Growing up there weren’t too many bastions of gallusness in my neck of the woods, we specialised in harvesting the strong silent types in Bearsden, but there were a couple of exceptions, my good pal Joe Hunter being one.
Joe was that kid who had all the cool gear first – the oxblood Doc Martens polished to a tee, the Arthur Black shirt and the proper Crombie coat, but it was his chutzpah that set him apart and whilst he wasn’t quite as good at fitba as Slim Jim, he wisnae bad at that either, mind you he could be a bit of a bam at times….