THE Duke of Edinburgh made an eventful visit to Glasgow in March 1960. Amidst his usual round of civic engagements, he not only received a solid gold quaich of local workmanship - the city’s gift to the infant Prince Andrew - but he also met, on his tour of a fibreglass factory, an old shipmate of his.

Accepting the quaich from Lord Provost Sir Myer Galpern (pictured), the Duke smiled and made a quip about the “habit-forming propensities” traditionally associated with such a vessel.

He is pictured here in his uniform of Colonel-in-Chief of the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders.

During his six-hour-long visit to the city, the Duke visited a fibreglass factory in Possil. There, he expressed a keen interest in the manufacturing processes he witnessed, and was delighted to meet some of the staff - one of whom, George Gaylor, was a supervisor in the textile department. It emerged that Mr Gaylor had served with the Duke on the cruiser, HMS Kent, in 1940.

The Duke went on to have an animated conversation with two shop stewards about industrial relations and promotion prospects.

Had they, he wanted to know, ever approached the management with a view to launching a profit-sharing scheme? He cited, with approval, just such a scheme run by ICI.

“It’s harder to stay a trade-union official,” he assured them with a laugh, “than to become an officer in the Army.”