Glasgow memories: A lion on St Vincent Street and other strange sights...

Perhaps you were around in April 1975, when passers-by on St Vincent Street did a double-take at the sight of this lion cub in the back of a Morris Minor Traveller.

According to reports in The Evening Times and our sister newspaper The Glasgow Herald, as it was called at the time, owner Tom Gillespie had nipped out to the bank and left Leo – really and truly, that was his name – in the back seat.

Rejected by his mother at birth, Leo had been rescued by the warden of a safari park and weaned by one of the park’s Alsatian guard dogs, which had just given birth to a litter of pups.

Partick boatyard. Pic: Newsquest

“I had always wanted a lion,” Mr Gillespie, from Johnstone, told the Herald, “so a friend of mine who is a director of the safari park told me he had one for me with the right temperament.

“I have had him since he was nine weeks old and he stays in the trailer which is parked beside a service station I used to run.”

Tom said he fed Leo on porridge, eggs and some pet food with the occasional slice of toast and trifle but lest you think this all sounds like Leo’s owner was pulling our legs, it really was true. And at least no-one was likely to try to steal his car...

Earlier in the year, a less chirpy Tom had had to appear in court after a motorist who had stopped in for some petrol claimed Leo had “jumped up and bitten him on his bottom.”

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It was claimed that in February 1975 on the garage forecourt, the man did “suffer to be at large, a dangerous animal, namely a lion, without its being secured by a rope or other means” contrary to an 83-year-old Act.

Tom was cleared of all charges, after a case at Johnstone Burgh Court left everyone scratching their heads at the weirdness of it all.

It was, unsurprisingly, the first time a lion had figured in such a charge - the defence team said it was the most unusual case they had ever worked on - and throughout it all, Leo sat, quite the thing, in Mr Gillespie’s car outside the building.

Afterwards, Tom gave Leo a big hug and said: “He is just a big, soft pet.”

In 1974, you could have been forgiven for thinking you had taken a strange turn, if you had spotted these boats in the middle of some Partick tenements.

No water to be found, but still, here sits a fine collection of vessels which, as our photographer noted on the back of the image “brings a whiff of the sea to city dwellers.”

In fact, this is Partick Boats on Dalcross Street, just behind what is now the Kelvin Hall, and in those days was Partick Cross subway station.

There were a few chandlers in the city in those days, helping well-off Glasgow businessmen indulge their sailing hobbies on the sea off the west coast, or at Loch Lomond.

There was Clyde Chandlers in Great Western Road and Duncan Yacht Chandlers used to have a showroom on West Nile Street.

Elephants head for the circus through George Square in 1957 through George Square. Pic: Newsquest

Hardly the most appopriate circus act nowadays, back in 1957, catching a glimpse of these might elephants in George Square would have certainly been a conversation stopper.

The animals were on their way to a circus, in the days when it was more acceptable to include animal acts. They must have made quite a sight rumbling through the city streets, turning the square into a 'trunk' road for the evening....

What is the strangest thing you have spotted on a Glasgow street? Send us your stories and photos.