Someone I met when I was down in Londonshire last week asked me where I was from. On receiving my reply, he pulled a face.

“It’s a great city,” I spluttered, more out of petulance than anything else.

“All I know about it is murder, crime and poverty,” was the response.

Now, we all know about Glasgow’s glories. The art, the Mackintosh, the sense of humour, the museums, the buildings, the people, the leafy West End and all the rest. (Well, almost all the rest). The trouble is, there is a smidgen of truth in the negative stereotype.

But how, I wondered, has this smidgen become the international reputation of the second city of Empire?

When I was dozing on the sleeper coming home I found myself wondering if it is all down to a TV show. Could it really be that all the energy of the Glasgow’s Miles Better campaign has been underminded by years of Taggart?

I suspect it has.

Theres just as many murders in Morse or Lewis or Midsommer. But they take place in pretty surroundings.

You don’t get many murders in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Taggart now, do you?

It must have cost the city millions.