THERE was an interesting article about taxi drivers in a London newspaper a good few years ago, in which drivers from across Britain spoke frankly about their experiences. Some experiences were good, others bad. One driver had been stabbed. Another recalled that a young woman had given birth in the back of his cab. Others spoke of “runners” – customers who flee without paying the fare. One said that her customers had come to see her as a confidante.

That last aspect rings a bell with George McIntosh. The 61-year-old has been driving with Glasgow Taxis for three decades and he has lost count of the number of times he has had revealing or intimate conversations with strangers. As it happens, he’s open and engaging, with a ready wit, so he is, you imagine, easy to talk to, even if you’re sitting in the rear seat and all you can see of him is the back of his head, and his eyes in the mirror.

“It makes it easier for them,” he says. “You get eye contact in the mirror, but they’re happy to talk to the back of your head because they know you’re focusing on the road. The intercom has made conversation easier, too.”

Taxi drivers of course see a lot during their countless hours spent behind the wheel. McIntosh is no different. He tells you about the time he was taking a wheelchair-bound man to a dentist for a check-up, only to find that the dentist’s flat wasn’t wheelchair-accessible. So the dentist and his assistant carried out the check-up (plus a filling) in the back of the cab.

McIntosh and his wife Cathy got into the taxi-driving game a long time ago. They had friends who were taxi drivers in the city and when the couple were selling up some other businesses they decided it would be a natural progression to follow them.

“We went out and did the Knowledge together” – a comprehensive test of the city streets and places of interest.

“Prior to that we had done a lot of tour-management, and once you’ve done that it’s sort of normal to fall into driving a taxi. I’ve been doing this for nearly 30 years now, and that’s what freaks me out. Thirty years? The time just goes by in the blink of an eye.”

What keeps him motivated? “Every single day is different,” he says, emphasising each syllable. “Every single one. There’s feast and famine. Some days you’ll do six jobs and make your money up; other days, 20 jobs, and you’ll make your money up. Every single day you’re driving about. I don’t think I could go back to being in an office or working in one place. You’re constantly out, constantly working.

“Every single person who gets in could be totally different,” he continues.

“You get ones who want to moan at you. There are other people who find it confessional. A  lot of folk find it cathartic. They’ll start telling you something that they can’t tell anybody else. You have to be very careful, though, and not put an opinion in. They’re not looking for an opinion; they want someone who’ll say, ‘yeah … yeah … I know what you’re saying’.

“A while ago I picked up a guy who was taking his dog to the vet. He began talking about his wife. She has dementia and is starting to go. It turned out that the guy wouldn’t do respite care.” McIntosh could relate to the man: like most families, his own has had its share of illness, so his empathy is genuine, unforced. “I had an interesting chat with the man; I knew where he was coming from,” he says. “He was feeling guilty about not doing respite care. At the end, he said, ‘thanks very much: it was good talking about it’. I think he was looking for reassurance. You get that a lot of that, folk looking for reassurance that they’re not bad people. The great ones are always the lassie falling out with the guy. You always just turn round to them and say, ‘well, f*** him’. They’re like, ‘yeah, yeah’.” 

McIntosh’s sense of humour has resulted in more than a few gentle wind-ups. Some of his favourites have occurred when the city’s colleges and universities begin their academic years. “See when you get the students over here? You get a lot of Americans coming over for the year. If it’s guys, they come over here straightaway; if it’s lassies, they always come with their mum.” He smiles. “You can have so much fun with them. They’ll ask to go to Murano Street and ask, what’s it like? You’ll say, ‘Fantastic! See since last year’s riot? They’ve really done the place up’. You keep it going. You’ll say, ‘You know there’s a 10pm curfew on Saturday nights?’ They’ll look at you and say [he puts on an American accent] ‘wh-a-a-t?’” 

McIntosh teaches the Knowledge to new recruits and is also involved in customer care courses. He tells them to smile when somebody gets into the cab. He himself bids people a cheery “hi” or “hello“; if the customer isn’t in the mood for talking, well and good. It’s entirely up to them. He tells other taxi drivers that they can’t take their own prejudices into the cab with them. If they’re having a bad day, “don’t take it into the motor. Just smile.”

He recalls, however, one grumpy customer, an accountant, who, evidently in a bad mood, sat growling away in the back. Realising that a bright conversation was unlikely, McIntosh reached for the radio and switched it on. Radio 4, as it turns out. At the destination, the accountant grunted a sour epithet along the lines that that it had been the worst f****** radio programme he’d ever heard in his f****** life . “What, The Archers?”, McIntosh enquired, all innocence. “Is that what it was?” the man asked. “I said: ‘Yes, sir.’, and I thought, ‘God, you’re in a bad mood today, aren’t you?”

He once picked up a young couple whose toddler of about 18 months was crying. The man made a caustic reference to this, then began shouting at his wife and child. McIntosh wasn’t bothered by the crying but found it impossible to put up with the man’s behaviour. Eventually, in Renfield Street, he stopped the car and ordered him out. The man complied. McIntosh turned around and told the young woman: “Listen, it’s not you. I’m happy to take you on. I don’t mind the greeting wean, but I’m not having him shouting and bawling.”

There was another time when he ordered a man out after he spoke about slapping his wife and complained about having to appear in court. “I said, you’re beating up your wife and you think that’s OK?’ He said his dad had done it as well. I said, well, your dad was an a******* as well, then.

That’s one of the greatest things about being a taxi driver, that there is a cut-off point. But guys like that are very much the exception. Ninety-nine point nine nine per cent of people are just fine.” 

He once arrived at a house in Giffnock to find that a woman had left her drunk husband on the cab floor. He had driven off without noticing, and had to return. He has had some great hires, like the £200 he got for taking an old couple from Glasgow to Mallaig. The journey lasted the best part of five hours and involved numerous pit-stop.

Like other drivers (Glasgow Taxis’s fleet is more than 800-strong) he has seen an increase in the numbers of American tourists drawn to Scotland by the Outlander phenomenon. The job, he observes, has changed dramatically over the last 20 years thanks to technology. Speaking of which, he is dismissive of Uber. (Glasgow Taxis asked the city council last month to crack down on Uber, as has happened in London, and on other third-party apps, but a spokesman for the authority said there was “nothing for the council to consider”.) 

McIntosh smiles wryly when he recalls the snowy night when he picked up a young woman at Central Station. She was barefoot; her shoes were in her hand. “Put your shoes on,” he admonished her, gently. She gave him a withering look – “You know that look a teenager gives you, as if you’re the daftest person in the world?” he says. The woman held her shoes up for solemn inspection and said: ‘Jimmy Choos’. He laughs. “I thought, best to get chilblains and die rather than ruin your Jimmy Choos!”

One last entertaining story. Once, some bankers poured a well-dressed, drunken colleague into the cab outside a hotel, and gave McIntosh the fare and the address. A while later, outside the house, McIntosh struggled to wake him up. It took a while, as these things often do. The man, bleary-eyed, gazed at the house. “Driver,” he said finally. “Why have you taken me to my mother’s?” McIntosh waited a beat and said, “Well, when was the last time you phoned her?”