On my rare visits to Glasgow, I always try to pick up a copy of the Sunday Post. There is no other paper like it.
When I first read it, back in the 1970s, I was amazed that it had any audience at all. So I was astonished to be told that its odd mix of quirky news, sentimental stories and cartoon strips had made it the best-selling paper in Scotland by far.
Sales have slipped away over the years, but there are signs of a revival under Donald Martin, the editor who took over last year after quitting as editor-in-chief of the Herald group in Glasgow.
The paper has admirers in far-flung corners of the world, including many in England - and even some who do not have a Scottish background.
One of them is Phil Creighton, features editor at the Reading Post (which has no connection whatsoever to the Sunday Post). He emailed me today to heap praise on the "steadily improving" Post under Martin, saying: "He's boosted the pagination, introduced new features, tidied up the design, shuffled the book around to give it better pacing and brought in more news."
He added: "Yesterday's splash [in the edition published in England] was a feisty piece on the fallout from Cameron's race speech and there's more exclusives in the whole paper than you can shake a stick at.
"Its political reporting is insightful and gentle and there's little sensationalism... It's packed with reading that lasts the whole week - 104 pages for £1.10. Excellent value for money."
I can guarantee that Phil is not in the pay of the Post's Dundee publishers, DC Thomson. He tells me he has read the Post since I was a child living in Canterbury.
He fell in love first with its idiosyncratic cartoons - Oor Wullie and The Broons. Now, as an adult, he writes: "I've been drawn in by its honesty and unsensationalism, and its readers' letters."
And here's another thing. The paper is the only one that still has an office in Fleet Street. One of their London-based reporters told me at a Commons lunch the other week that the staff are moving out during a refurbishment, but they expect to be back.
As Paw Broon might say, there's something to be said for tradition, aye?
