Book cover for Tinseltown in the Brain: A whimsical wander through Glasgow in the eighties by Donal McLaughlin

Tinseltown in the Brain

A whimsical wander through Glasgow in the eighties

2026 Released
254 Pages
4-6 Hours
Ebook Unavailable
Audiobook Unavailable
Hardback Unavailable
Catterglen PublishingISBN 9781919485805

Glasgow was the beating heart of the music industry in the 1980s. Scottish bands dominated the charts and our feature films charmed the world.

This memoir is a light-hearted wander back through Scotland's friendliest city taking in the sights & sounds, the venues, the fashion, the people, the culture and the banter.

With no mobile phones and no internet, we had to amuse ourselves by sticking traffic cones on statues, singing on top of bus shelters, masterminding Hebridean hotdog heists and doing backflips in a kilt.

The book explores some of the important lessons we learned along the way like: Why you shouldn't have your Christmas dinner in the middle of somebody's dance floor, why it's best to avoid hitting your golf ball into a car park containing Scottish music hall legends, and why humming tunes in a record shop can turn out to be a terrible idea.

There are loads of 80s song titles scattered throughout the book. Some are a bit less obvious than others. See how many you can spot!

Donal McLaughlin

Donal McLaughlin specializes in translating contemporary Swiss fiction. He has translated more than one hundred writers for the "New Swiss Writing" anthologies.

More by Donal McLaughlin

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