Glasgow’s famous Citizens Theatre used to stand amidst the black, sagging tenements of the old Gorbals. Those buildings vanished in the slum clearances, to be replaced with tower blocks, car parks and weedy waste ground.

Who’s to say which version of the Gorbals was better? Looking at black and white photos of the old Gorbals, full of scamps swinging from lamp posts, men tramping home from work and women chattering at the windows, it’s perhaps easy to say that some sand-blasting and a hell of a lot of renovation would’ve been far preferable to the hideous, alien tower blocks.

But whatever your view of the changing Gorbals, everyone can agree that the Citizens is a brilliant, beloved and enduring part of the town. It’s a “pearl in a shell” says one of the contributors in this documentary about the Citizens, Blood and Glitter (BBC2), and the “shell” he refers to is the building’s exterior which has been “burnt down, knocked down, rebuilt” over the years, but he could just as easily be referring to the Gorbals itself: the “pearl” of the theatre nestling inside a community besmirched, assaulted and razed to the ground by the wise men of Glasgow City Council, the same wise men who destroy grand old Victoriana and lay down motorway in its place.

My grumpy attitude about the vanishing of old Glasgow wasn’t shared by this documentary which was a happy, quirky celebration of 70 years of the Citizens. A stream of famous actors who’d played there kicked off proceedings: Pierce Brosnan reminisced, saying it was “full-on theatre…lots of eyeshadow!”, Rupert Everett said it was “electrifying”, and Mark Rylance rejoiced in how the Citizens would “tell really dangerous secrets behind the mask of it being a play.”

And for the ordinary folk in the dark, we were also invited to share in the wonder, not just by enjoying the plays, but via the exuberant surroundings: “It’s what I imagined as a kid a theatre should be: special, magical and golden.” For many people from run-down Glasgow (in the days before the city began to “smile better”) it was our first, and perhaps only, experience of velvets, gilt, scrollwork and splendid lights. Otherwise, for the working-class, you could only find such grandeur in a church or museum. It was certainly a “pearl in a shell”.

And the theatre doesn’t just exist to offer two hours of splendour to the locals before closing its doors and folding itself away: The Citizens employs 40 full-time staff and its props and sets are made in their own workshops in Gorbals. It also runs acting classes and script-writing workshops for the local community, as well as regular sales of 50p tickets, all of which ensures no-one need be excluded from this place. If you can’t afford the tickets, you can get a 50p one (if you’re willing to queue on chilly mornings) and if you don’t know anything about acting or writing then they’ll teach you. If you're a little kid for whom the theatre seems posh and intimidating then they'll come into your school on outreach programmes. 

This theatre truly deserves its name and its fame.