Many amazing things happened in 1876. One such was the first telephone call which was made by its Edinburgh-born inventor, Alexander Graham Bell.

It was the year, too, when Heinz Ketchup, without a dollop of which most meals would be intolerable, first appeared on tables.

But by far the most important event of that momentous year was the publication of this newspaper.

It was the best of times you might say when the Evening Times started to roll off the presses.

Then, Glasgow was in the midst of the kind of boom that is associated with gold rushes.

Within its ever-expanding boundaries, factories produced all anyone needed to carry them from cradle to grave.

Boosted by tens of thousands of incomers from the Highlands and Islands and Ireland, its population would soon top one million, one of the first cities in Europe to achieve that number.

Needless to say, there was a desperate need for information, and for news, which enterprising publishers attempted to satisfy with titles for every taste and political hue.

But while others came and went like snow off the proverbial dyke, the Evening Times remained a fixture, part of the city’s DNA, its streets unthinkable without the Evening Times’ vendors full-throatedly imploring and cajoling passers-by to purchase the latest edition.

As I discovered in researching my book, Glasgow: The Autobiography, many of the city’s greatest writers contributed to the paper’s pages.

It was a rite of passage, an essential distinction  on a CV.

One notable scribe was Cliff Hanley who was born in Gallowgate, the eighth of a family of nine children.

On leaving school he went straight into journalism which, like the Mafia, he was never able to leave.

Hanley’s classic book, Dancing in the Streets, was serialised in the Evening Times where, for reasons lost in history, its title was changed to My Gay Glasgow.

“When I think of Glasgow,” he wrote, “I can’t imagine it without Hanleys in it, and it has ended with a fair number, although some of them fled the country at intervals and tried to forget the whole thing.”

The era Hanley described was the 1930s  to the 1950s.

His writing, it was said, “has a kick like a Glasgow flyweight”.

One of the heroes of his book is Bud Neill, who began to draw cartoons while working as a bus driver.

 In 1944, he was enlisted by the Evening Times.

Neill’s subject was Glasgow in all its glaur and glory. His most famous character was called Lobey Dosser.

In the local parlance – as I surely don’t need to remind readers – a Lobey Dosser is a lodger who, not having the wherewithal to pay the rent, must sleep in the ‘lobey’, i.e. the lobby or hallway.

Another of Neill’s characters is ‘Rank Bajin’, a ne’er-do-well who is to Sheriff Dosser what Moriarty is to Sherlock Holmes.

  Neill and Hanley were following in a noble tradition.

Among their forebears were the likes of JJ Bell, author of Wee Macgreegor, who wrote for the Times, and Neil Munro of Para Handy fame, who wrote  for its rival, the Evening News.

Mention, too, must  be made of Jack House, one of several scribes associated with this newspaper to be dubbed “Mr Glasgow”, the only accolade he thought worth bothering about.

Born in Tollcross, he was of the opinion that Glasgow is the greatest city in the world bar none.

And, as everyone knows,only fools dare argue with a Glaswegian.