This week we are celebrating all that's great about Glasgow's pubs. In Day One of our special series JONATHAN RENNIE meets two of the people who help make our city's pubs famed throughout the world.

This week we are celebrating all that's great about Glasgow's pubs. In Day One of our special series JONATHAN RENNIE meets two of the people who help make our city's pubs famed throughout the world.

THE LANDLADY: Angela's a local legend

IT'S A busy afternoon and orders for new barrels need to be completed, pints need to be pulled and glasses washed, but despite this landlady Angela Bradley is standing in a corner of the Three Judges playing counsellor to one of her regulars.

This is Partick Cross, not downtown Boston, but this could be the famous bar Cheers where everybody knows your name. And Angela knows all their life stories.

Angela, 38, took over from bar manageress and local legend Helen McCarroll in March this year.

The thought of Helen leaving struck fear into everyone; the regulars, the brewery bosses at Maclays, even Angela.

For 15 years Helen helped build the bar into one of the city's most successful pubs - keeping the riff-raff out and the regulars in.

But Helen knew that one person could do the job - Angela.

"I have never been one for long-term jobs," admits Angela. "I've worked in the bingo, I've been a park ranger at the Botanics, but I've never stayed around.

"I'd worked here for eight years when Helen announced she would be leaving. I was petrified. Then Helen suggested I take over."

Seven months in and all is going well. Regulars like Jimmy the German ("once served in the British Army in former West Germany") and Tony the Fish ("well, he likes to fish") all approve of the appointment, all roaring their praise when asked whether she was a good choice.

Their approval has probably been helped by the Summer Holiday' style Three Judges days out, Angela taking a mini-bus of regulars off to different parts of Scotland before bringing them back to the Judges in the evening for a long session.

She's continued with the pub tradition of getting pork pies from a Birmingham butcher delivered every Thursday, a delicacy according to one old man holding a pint of stout.

And every Friday a crowd of lecturers from Glasgow University still come through the doors at 5.05pm to begin the weekend.

"This place is made by the customers," says Angela.

"The whole character of the place is shaped by them, and they are all as regular as clockwork.

"They sit in the same seats, they want to watch the horse racing on a Saturday, the priest comes in for his pint of Guinness after mass. They all know one another, and if there's someone new they want to know them.

"Gavin Mitchell, who plays the barman Boabby in Still Game, was in the other week and one of our old regulars, John, spotted him.

"It was all You're him off the telly, aren't you?, who is it you play again?' "Gavin was great and very polite but John started asking a million questions so eventually I had to jump in.

"It was a matter of: Right John, leave the man alone'.

There's another regular in the pub too - Euan McMillan, who runs the famous Lismore, a pub just a few hundred yards along Dumbarton Road.

Ironically enough, Angela, who lives on Dumbarton Road, is a regular at the Lismore, and vice versa.

"Sometimes we pass in the street after a shift.

"I don't drink in my pub and he doesn't drink in his, so we pass each other as we head to each other's pub!"

THE CELLARMAN: My wife says they will carry me up from down here in a casket!

HE'S the Bon Accord's secret weapon. The man who makes sure the Charing Cross real ale pub serves perfect pints.

For almost 35 years Russell Burt finished his day job as a chemistry teacher in Hamilton, swapped the shirt and tie for an apron, and headed into the city to climb down the stairs to the pub's cellars.

Possibly the longest serving cellarman in the city, the Campaign for Real Ale devotee has watched the bar change hands and the clientele grow up, even seeing some of his old pupils pop in for a pint as men.

"It doesn't feel like nearly 35 years," says Russell, 56.

"I'd always loved real ale and the Bon Accord at the time was one of the few places still specialising in cask ales. By the 1970s a lot of the pubs had moved over to lagers and heavy.

"I was a chemistry graduate and was doing my teacher training and decided to put my degree and my love of beer to good use. So I got a job dealing with the bar's ales in 1974."

Until he retired from Earnock High School in 2003, Russell would belt through from Hamilton to the bar to keep an eye on the casks.

Unlike pressurised kegs of dead lager, living ales require a mixture of science, art and a lot of patience to get right.

Some casks need to be opened to allow the fermentation to finish, others need to be turned around every few hours to stop sediment building up, others need to be regularly rolled along the cellar floor for a week to ensure proper fermentation.

Russell picked up the CAMRA John Whitecross Memorial Award for services to real ale in 2005. Walking in on him during a shift feels like gatecrashing a secret laboratory, kegs moving, taps bubbling, and lots of half full pints.

You see, that's the beauty of being a cellarman, you have to taste everything before you hook it up to the bar upstairs.

"There's reasons why I've kept doing this!", smiles Russell.

Upstairs things haven't changed much either. The main bar has moved position and the pub is now in the hands of Paul McDonagh and his family, but it is still a hotch potch of Glasgow life.

Back in the 1970s and 1980s The North Street bar was the haunt, quite literally, of the jet set.

Pilots and air stewardesses staying at the Hilton or the Marriot on the other side of the motorway would check in at the bar, sipping G&Ts and rubbing shoulders with locals with their hauf and haufs.

Today, students rub shoulders with lawyers and doctors, real ale buffs with Japanese tourists looking for a master class in whisky, and plenty of undergraduates from the pub's early days in the 1970s who are now scholars in the way of the place.

"The loyalty of the people who drink here is incredible," says Paul, 51.

"There are people who have grown up in the place. They were students and now they're adults - they are now bringing their own children here.

"I was even on holiday abroad when I met a doctor who recognised my accent. He asked what I did and when I mentioned the pub he asked if we still served Theakston's Old Peculiar. He remembered drinking it while he was studying here back in the 1970s.

"There are some who are loyal to the beer more than the pub. We have different beers on every couple of weeks and you see people who pop in only when their favourite beer is on tap."

Little do any of them know that it is still the same man looking after their brews. In fact, in a funny coincidence, Paul first learned about cask ales and how to handle them back in the 1980s from Russell.

"He's the star with this kind of thing," admits Paul.

"Cellarmen, especially with this kind of beer, play a big role. Russell really knows his stuff.

"He's brilliant and he's in with the bricks."

For Russell, you might as well cement a gravestone down there. His teaching days might be over, but there is no end in sight to his days down below.

"My wife says they'll carry me up from down here in a casket!" he jokes.