LOVE and marriage, horse and carriage, they go together like, er, booze and journalists. OK, so Sammy Cahn’s pairs work better but the two are still as inextricable in the public imagination. An institute you can’t disparage? Well, not quite.

Can’t have one without the other? Even if the odd columnist keeps the tradition of long lunches alive, the days of reporters existing entirely on a liquid diet are long gone and with them the need for a bar snuggled next to the office. Now Glasgow’s Press Bar, in Albion Street, originally the Express Bar and retreat of journalists since 1928 when it was purpose-built to serve the staff of the Daily Express, will be the next to disappear.

City centre pubs are heaving at this time of year, but according to the Scottish Licensed Trade Association 40% of pubs actually recorded a slump in custom over Christmas last year and while Christmas Day on a Sunday might help this year, it won’t be enough to keep small establishments going all year round.

Like newspapers, pubs are undergoing a revolution. After the drink-drive limit was lowered in December 2014, the SLTA reported the closure of seven pubs every week in the following nine months, up from three a week as the smoking ban took effect and now the pub which doesn’t sell decent food is likely to have a short life-expectancy.

Like any other business, bars need a unique-selling point and in the days when the gastro experience involved a pie heater next to the peanuts it was usually the clientele so newspaper pubs literally had a built-in advantage. Want to meet a Daily Record reporter? Head to The Copy Cat on Glasgow's Anderston Quay. Scotsman and Evening News people? The Jinglin’ Geordie on Edinburgh's Fleshmarket Close was the place to go.

Newspapers of the 1960s and 70s were not unique in having a busy boozer next to the plant, but howfs next to banks, insurance offices and factories were just places where people went to get hammered after work and moan about the boss. They didn’t have the conspiratorial undertone, the Embassy Regal-cured intrigue or the reflected glory of minor celebrity of the newspaper pub. Nobody was ever called back from the pub to process a claim or bang in an extra rivet, but reporters being hauled back to the office just as the next drink was being nursed was a nightly occurrence. The newspaper pub wasn’t just a bar, it was a department and the bar staff vital support workers; not just boozers but business exchanges.

These places were where tips were passed on, scores settled, rumours started and rewards given in kind, where there were often more politicians propping up the bar than reporters, full in the knowledge that it was all going down on expenses. And if people got hammered and moaned about the boss at the same time, then everyone went home happy, usually thanks to an office taxi-chit. Who needed media networking events in those days?

As a student on this paper, I’d marvelled at some of the reporting pack knocking it back at lunchtime when we were out covering the Miners’ Strike but of course not everyone knew when to stop. Shattered marriages, shortened careers and shortened lives were the inevitable consequence and every old newspaper hand has tales of colleagues’ lives blighted by drink.

Fortunately I learnt early on that mixing drink and work wasn’t for me – after a couple of lunchtime pints all I wanted to do was sleep – and on moving to Newcastle, where the Chronicle and Journal had a built-in pub like the Press Bar, senior colleagues used to sink several pints during the evening break before heading back to sign off the pages. They couldn’t drive a car but were driving the paper.

The Copy Cat purred its last in 2009 and although the Jinglin’ Geordie is still serving it has never been the same since the last big Friday night in November 1999 when the papers flitted to Holyrood Road. Drinking sessions during a normal working shift seem as alien now as smoking in the office, and it’s not just because of the new drink-drive limit. The slow advance of anti-drink culture will surely mean the public’s relationship with alcohol will continue to change, although it probably won’t feel like it to the men and women in the emergency services over the next two nights as the end-of-work party season reaches a climax.

But I’ll certainly raise a Christmas glass to those on either side of the counter who made Scottish newspapers the institutions they were and should still remain.

John McLellan is director of the Scottish Newspaper Society.