A compelling piece of footage has been unearthed capturing the sights and sounds of Glasgow city centre's thriving busking scene in the 1980s.
Filmed by three young college students in the spring of 1984, the 16-minute-long feature is interspliced with performance footage and interview clips with a variety of local buskers and street performers - a couple of whom would even go on to become household names.
Among those making a cameo appearance on the pedestrian precincts of Argyle Street and Buchanan Street is legendary Glasgow street performer Robert the Robot, a pre-fame Scottish rock star and a penny whistle-playing pensioner instantly recognisable to just about anyone who lived through the era.
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Speaking to Glasgow Live, Gordon Ferguson, who was one of the trio behind the 39-year-old film, said he and fellow students, Steven and Shona, at Jordanhill College had been handed an assignment where they had to film a chosen subject.
He said: "Around that time we were aware that there was a pretty vibrant busking scene in the city centre, so myself, the girl who did the interviews and a friend I was at university and primary with, we decided together to do that.
"We didn't really have any preparation, we just knew that if we went into town that we'd get enough footage for a 15-minute video.
"Initially, it was just going to be buskers, but the guy Robert the Robot sort of stole the show, because compared with the others he had this big, ginormous crowd."
The shaky VHS footage, which dates from March 31, 1984, was brought back to mind by happenstance, when Gordon spotted a post by Robert the Robot himself on social media.
Gordon explained: "That fella [Robert the Robot] posted something the other week and I messaged him saying, 'you know, I remember videoing you years ago - it's upstairs somewhere in a big pile of video tapes'. And luckily enough, I found it.
"People seem to like it; it brings back a lot of memories."
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Soup Dragons star
In the first couple of minutes Gordon and his student pals encounter a young duo from Motherwell on saxophone and 12-string guitar entertaining shoppers on Buchanan Street. Incredibly, the guitarist, Jim McCulloch, then aged just 17 and still at school, would go on to play in the BMX Bandits and taste international success with The Soup Dragons.
The pair tell interviewer Shona that busking on Buchanan Street can be quite lucrative when the weather's good, with each earning as much as £15 a day - around £45 when adjusted for inflation.
Hearing his much younger self playing guitar and speaking to camera after all these years is a special thing for Jim McCulloch, who never knew the footage of himself and pal Jimmy Gallagher existed until two days ago.
Jim told us: "It's a difficult thing to articulate, just having that hindsight that this is where it all started - the first kind of venture out on to the stage, albeit it's a pavement.
"We were still at school and it was just this Saturday afternoon thing where you could make some money for beer or whatever - not very lofty ideals or gains, but we found a good way to make money.
"I just never expected this kind of thing to resurface, but that's the nature of the internet, I guess."
Robert the Robot
Following a clip featuring an old man showboating with his fiddle by playing it over his head and behind his back, we then cut to the famous black leather boots and white jumpsuit of Robert the Robot.
In the sequence, Robert interacts with the huge crowd he's attracted, including a young girl who definitely looks far too childlike to be smoking the lit cigarette she's clutching.
It's the earliest known footage of the now iconic Glasgow street performer, who reveals during his interview that he had only been doing his act for five months at that point.
We also caught up with Robert, real name Robert McGowan, who, just like Jim McCulloch, couldn't get over the re-emergence of the almost four-decade-old clip.
He said: "I'm looking at the moves going, 'that doesnae look like the moves I do,' but I'm forgetting it's 39 years ago, my voice is different and I'm that thin as well!
"But 100 per cent it's me. You can see I've got the advertisement for Candleriggs Market on my back, which I remember I wore at that time."
Penny Whistle Man
After cutting to another fresh-faced duo, this time on the oboe and guitar, outside Grafton's department store, the film focuses in on a bespectacled elderly gentleman in a tartan bunnet and scarf who's a dab hand with his twin penny whistles.
Known to a generation as the "Penny Whistle Man", busker William 'Scotty' McLean had been performing on Glasgow's streets for decades.
McLean, who reveals he's been busking since 1946, tells the interviewer: "I only play whenever I'm able, when the weather's good and that.
"My photograph's been taken by people from all over the world - I've never left the city, but tourists that have been here take photaes of me."
Mentioning that his earnings have dipped somewhat due to the UK recession, McLean then has a little tongue-in-cheek pop at the recent emergence in Glasgow of youngsters taking over the streets with guitars.
"If they could play, then I wouldnae mind," he laughs.
Fittingly, the film ends with one last pair of young buskers, who, in a sign of the times, state they are unemployed and are performing on the streets, partly out of enjoyment, but also to make ends meet and have a bit of a life.
"We're going to a concert the night, so we need the money to get in," says one of the two men. "Any extras, and we'll go and have a Guinness!"
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