A generation ago, no high street or shopping precinct was complete without its own video shop offering short-term hires of the latest blockbusters and classic movies for an affordable price.
Video stores started appearing in the early 1980s around the time that VHS won the home video format battle over Betamax, and they soon multiplied in number.
Glasgow was not short of VHS rental stores. For a start, the city was home to Azad Video, which in the 80s and 90s would go on to become Scotland's biggest video rental chain.
From Byres Road to Bridgeton, there were Azad Video shops all over the city, with one store even featuring prominently in one of the best-known British blockbusters of the VHS era.
The Azad outlet at 312 Dumbarton Road provided the backdrop for a key scene in the 1996 film Trainspotting in which Tommy and Lizzie's raunchy home video is unwittingly taken back to the video shop in a rental box.
However, Azad company would later dissolve in a haze of infamy over unpaid tax.
Global Video and Ritz Video were also familiar sights across Greater Glasgow, with outlets practically everywhere on both sides of the Clyde.
In the 1990s American chain Blockbuster Video gradually became ubiquitous in the UK, with Glasgow boasting several express stores and larger outlets.
Wandering into one of these places was a wondrous experience for a young kid. You could spend literally hours in these places browsing the stacks and stacks of colourful video cassettes on display, reading every synopsis on the back of each box.
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Hiring videos wasn’t all plain sailing, of course.
Unless you had a mate's recommendation, there was very little to help inform your choice - and it was absolutely crucial that you picked a decent film. Hell mend you if you ruined family movie night by picking up an utter stinker of a horror flick or cheesy romcom.
Sometimes you’d rent out a movie and the picture and sound would be completely gubbed thanks to the carelessness of the previous customer who probably played it on a knackered machine.
And don't even get us started on those ungrateful sods who didn't bother to rewind the cassette.
On other occasions, you’d forget to take the bloody thing back and rack up obscene amounts of dolla in late return fees.
There was also the danger of mixing up one of your own home cassettes and accidentally taking it back to the shop - as illustrated in particularly severe fashion in Trainspotting.
While video rental shops survived well into the 2000s, the old VHS cassettes were gradually ousted in favour of DVDs.
Blockbuster Video - the last big chain to survive - bit the dust in 2014, with the firm reportedly unable to adapt to changing consumer habits.
Vogue Video in Edinburgh’s Clerk Street is reputed to have been the last active video hire shop in the country when it closed in May 2019.
