If you were to ask me, right now, what my favourite city was, I'd have to answer: Lisbon. For a long time I held on to the opinion that Glasgow occupied that position: I am an adopted Glaswegian, afterall. In a spare moment I sat and thought about it; weighing up the pros and cons of each, and the result was that Lisbon just shaded it. The reason? It is really quite simple. During the past decade, I have spent far more time in Lisbon than I have in Glasgow, and I am much more familiar with the Portuguese capital today than I am with Scotland's and Britain's greatest city. Don't get me wrong, I still love Glasgow, and I have lots of happy memories of the 14 years I lived, worked and studied there - and I would move back there in a heartbeat - but it is increasingly a part of my past, and the city as it is today is very different from the one I knew back in the 1980s. Lisbon, on the other hand, is a city I have grown to know and love over the past 12 or so years. When I arrived there to live and work back in September 1995, it was like stepping back in time. It still had small specialist shops: grocers, butchers, haberdashers, ironmongers and even places where you could go to get a bit of foam cut. There were no fast food franchises: no Macdonald's, Burger King or KFC. Every second shop seemed to be a pastelaria and there were restaurants on almost every street where you could get a good three-course meal with wine for 600 escudos (3 euros). Much of that has gone now, and the shopping malls and franchises have moved in. Many--although by no means all--of the small shops have gone, to be replaced with fashionable boutiques and bars. The streets are more crowded, there are more cars, Alfacinhas seem to be getting heavier (just like the rest of us in the western world) and the restaurants have got more expensive; however, despite these changes, Lisbon still has neigbourhood cafes, restaurants and shops; you can still eat well in many restaurants for around 10 euros, and the people -- if you take the time to get to know them and learn a little of their language -- are every bit as friendly and welcoming as Glaswegians. Now, I'll like Lisbon even better if Benfica lose heavily to Celtic in next week's Champions League tie at Celtic Park!

Past years -- 2006, 2005 and 2004 respectively