MY first memory of a theatre hidden away in the heart of Glasgow is in a story of an assistant in a shoe shop who could quietly slip into a wonderland.
I was fascinated to hear about this amazing doorway at the back of her shop that opened to reveal a million dreams and a place that once burst at the seams with song and laughter.
Welcome to the Britannia Panopticon Music Hall, which opened for business in the late 1850s. And is open again today.
It sits face onto the Trongate above a row of shops. Today, you enter via a little lane to the side.
The façade, still clear today was rebuilt in 1857 and is in an Italianate style to the designs of Gildard & Macfarlane.
Typically for its time and in music hall tradition, it was linked to a pub on the ground floor.
In its earliest days it was home to a host of music, variety, comedy and tableaux.
It could also be racy and on the occasion of seeing a shapely dancing girl’s thigh, one chap declared that “no leg of mutton should be hung in a butcher’s window without being properly dressed!”
A facelift beckoned for the Britannia under the husband and wife team of Mr and Mrs Rossborough.
They created a new dawn in which no ladies would be admitted unless accompanied by gentlemen.
Their playbill included child performers, acrobats and animals.
Some of the greatest names in British music hall were to ply the boards including Dan Leno, Marie Lloyd and Harry Lauder.
Songs of then you’ll recall and join in today include: Champagne Charlie; Daisy, Daisy; and The Man who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo.
As the years rolled on the magic evolved with something called electricity.
That enabled the hall to introduce animated pictures in 1896. Cinema was born.
By the start of the 20th century however, the Britannia was beginning to look dated as exciting and new places sprung up in the city like the Pavilion and the Kings.
And so for a while it closed until a revival in May 1906 that incorporated a waxworks, a menagerie and magic mirrors.
The name changed from the Britannia Music Hall to The Grand Panopticon.
That name is derived from the Greek “Pan” meaning everything and “Opti” to see.
It was in this place that a certain Arthur Stanley Jefferson appeared. He returned in the 1930s when the world knew him as Stan Laurel.
And there’s a plaque to honour Stanley up the next lane along.
Today, you no longer have to know someone in a shoe shop to get inside the Britannia Panopticon.
It is a thriving centre that stages shows and events while raising money to continue refurbishing this giant of Glasgow culture.
This weekend, there are spooky events for Hallowe’en and in November, there are shows to mark Glasgow’s Great War.
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