Moving to Glasgow can be a daunting experience for the outsider. I mean, we all know that things have gotten a lot better lately: what with Finnieston, and the regenerated riverside, and the whole Turner Prize thing. But there’s still a residual feeling – especially among soft, southern jessies – that we’re a bunch of violent, regressive cavemen who live on deep-fried food.

Of course, it’s terrifying moving anywhere new. But a city such as this one, with its… how can I put this… less-than-shining reputation, is a completely different prospect from transplanting to, say, Lincoln or Bath or somewhere. Nobody’s scared of Bath.

This self-image issue is particularly pertinent around this time of year, when the city’s sizeable contingent of Freshers is just bedding in.

We have the second-largest student population in the UK here, which means there are currently thousands of extremely fresh faces crowding up our pubs and clogging the aisles in our Sainsburys Locals and making us all feel decrepit with their smooth chins and impenetrable, on-point banter. These newcomers will experience the full gamut of Glasgow’s delights in good time, but those first few weeks in a new city can be fraught with difficulty: especially when it comes to the all-important nightspot selection.

This is where Firewater comes in. A perennial favourite of students with taste, it is an outsider on the Sauchiehall strip in that it doesn’t play chart music or depend on gimmicks. It deals in classic indie and rock, and cheap beer and bourbon. This winning formula has been packing in a vibrant, notoriously keen crowd for over a decade, and when it hits 1am and the dancefloor is packed with Fred Perry-sporting musos singing along to The Smiths and Primal Scream there are few places better to be. You might be an experienced indie campaigner permanently stuck in the mid-noughties, or you might be looking for a subterranean

Q: What’s the most terrifying movie ever?

1. Nicole Orr, 20, Cumbernauld, “The Fourth Kind”

Jenna Platt, 22, Livingston, “The Blair Witch Project”

2. Amy O’Neil, 20, Paisley, “Saw”

Victoria Hughes, 19, Newton Mearns, “Hide and Seek”

3. Paul Whyte, 20, Pollok, “The Halloween Series”

Paul Buskie, 20, Newton Mearns, “Evil Dead”

4. Liam Demo, 21, Southside, “Anything involving zombies”

Caitlin McArdle, 20, Pollok, “The conjuring”

5. Lauren Newman, 24, Paisley, “It”

Amee Mulgrew, 22, Glasgow, “The Human Centipede”

6. Megan Knapp, 22, Glasgow

Favourite Club? Sub Club

Favourite Bar? Gumbo

Favourite DJ? Calvin Harris

Favourite Band? The 1975

First Club? The Garage

What You Drinking? Prosecco

Describe Your Dancing? Very weird

7. Kerry-Anne Lang, 18, Lennoxtown, “Sinister”

Natalie Cunningham, 19, Kirkintilloch, “The Purge”