Few Edinburgh publicans have treated their paying customers quite so harshly as Willie Ross, proprietor of the Oxford Bar for 40 years after the Second World War.
A curmudgeon of epic proportions, Willie Ross ran the Young Street pub - which is famously a favourite of Ian Rankin and his fictional detective John Rebus - with an iron fist and imposed a hefty list of insanely strict rules, many of which simply wouldn't fly today.
Dogs and women were treated the same by Willie, as none were allowed near his bar. Ladies were sent through to the upstairs room, while dogs were banned outright after 1962 after one weed under a table.
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Those with an English accent were also treated appallingly. Given his pub shared its name with the eminent English university city, you'd be mistaken for believing Ross was something of an Anglophile.
This was very much not the case. A fierce nationalist, Willie Ross did not take kindly to those from south of the border at all and regularly refused to serve anyone with such an accent. You could've lived all your life in Edinburgh or even been born here, it didn't matter.
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Such was Willie's hatred of English visitors, he made a habit of closing his bar for the entirety of the Edinburgh Festival - a move that to most publicans would be deemed unthinkable. The bar was also typically closed on Saturdays, yet again limiting the number of outsiders venturing in throughout the year.
Perhaps least shocking (considering the previous points) was the chain-smoking landlord's insistence on only serving heavy ales and unadulterated spirits. Ask for a lager and you'd be in for a tongue-lashing. Order a whisky soda and lime and expect to be booted out the door before you had time to add "on the rocks, please".
Willie, as he often retorted to such "outlandish" requests, would say "we don't do cocktails".
Recalling Willie Ross on a post on the Lost Edinburgh Facebook page, Moyra Flynn said: "The Oxford was my father's favourite haunt right into the 70s. "I grew up with the stories about Wullie Ross, I have dozens of them!
"It used to be one of my ambitions to go in and introduce myself to him, as he was quite fond of my Dad but I never did. My Dad and brothers took my fiancé (now husband) in for the first time in the late 60s - he was convinced he'd be thrown out!
"Wullie didn't need a reason - if he didn't like your face, you were out - no matter who you were with. And don't dare ask for anything but water in your whisky! I think that may have been a hanging offence, in Wullie's eyes. It was definitely a confiscation of drink and barring offence."
Innes Hill commented: "Saw a couple chucked out in the 80s for asking for a white wine spritzer and a half shandy, you'd get arrested if you repeated the response now!"
Never fond of change, Willie Ross continued to close his bar at 10pm, even after the relaxation of the licensing laws in 1976 would've allowed him to extend his hours.
Photographer Len Cumming, who took a series of images of Willie Ross in the Oxford in 1982, confirmed that the publican's reluctance to change was the stuff of legend.
“He’d never have tolerated the smoking ban,” Len told Scotland on Sunday in 2017, “He would’ve just carried on smoking. The ban wouldn’t have flew with Willie, he would’ve told them where to go.
“I wouldn’t like to be the man who told Willie Ross he couldn’t smoke in his own bar!”
Willie Ross passed away in 1986, just as an aspiring young writer from Fife was applying the finishing touches to the first in a series of crime novels which would make the Oxford Bar famous around the world.
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