I Was 15. . .And the Rogano Opened My Eyes to Another World the Big Read. . . . Old Picture Brings Ex-Bellboy Back to Rogano the Big Read. . . . Old Picture Brings Ex-Bellboy Back to Rogano Sheila Hamilton Takes Joe Thomson On a Trip Down Memory Lane

Evening Times › October 06, 2008

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Summary

HALF A century ago, Joe Thomson would never have dared to dream that he could one day be sitting in Rogano sipping a glass of wine. . . and that it was the manager himself who would be offering him a drink.

For back then, he was just a wee lad from the Gorbals who was awestruck to be working in Glasgow's poshest restaurant, an institution in the city and a haunt of the rich and famous for over 70 years now.

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I Was 15. . .And the Rogano Opened My Eyes to Another World the Big Read. . . . Old Picture Brings Ex-Bellboy Back to Rogano the Big Read. . . . Old Picture Brings Ex-Bellboy Back to Rogano Sheila Hamilton Takes Joe Thomson On a Trip Down Memory Lane

Joe had gone straight from the Labour Exchange to Rogano.

"When I told my father, God bless him, that I had got the job as a bellboy, he asked where Rogano was. Nobody in the Gorbals had heard of it, " he chuckles.

"I started here in 1959 as a boy of 15 just out of school and when I came in at first, I was a nervous wreck. Bamboozled. A boy from a room and kitchen in Lawmoor Street in the Gorbals coming to such a high class res...

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