Mention Dundee and most people will probably think of Dundee cake. This is merely a Scottish Tourist Board invention which is very famous the world over but almost unknown in the city of Dundee itself where chips and pehs are infinitely more popular. More on pehs later. (Much more, actually.)

Nowadays, Dundee is often promoted as "the City of Discovery" because at Discovery Point on the waterfront, you can see the RRS Discovery which was the (Dundee built) ship used by Captain Robert Falcon Scott, the doomed polar explorer who was famous for not eating any huskies no matter how tough things got and also for having a truly brilliant middle name.

In their journals, Scott and his crew often complain of the "Dundee leak" which plagued their ship on its famous voyage to the Antarctic at the turn of last century. Now back in Dundee (on hire from London), the Discovery is the city's main tourist attraction. The leak will get fixed once a decent plumber can be found.

Other attractions include the a jute and textiles museum called the Verdant Works which despite the name is a brown building ("verdant" apparently means "green" in foreign), and Sensation which is an interactive science centre for confusing schooldren. (i.e. The kids mostly get confused even if they are confusing in themselves). Mills Observatory on the city's Balgay Hill is the only public observatory in the country and is an excellent centre for viewing the orange glow of the night-time sky above the brightly lit city.

Not far from the city centre but in a quiet corner behind a large statue of someone completely different (see later on), a small and inconspicuous wall plaque records the fact that "Near this spot William Wallace struck the first blow for the freedom of Scotland in 1288" It is not clear what this first blow may have been nor why Wallace chose that particular out-of-the-way bit of street, but it seems certain to have involved pehs as Dundee later became famous for Wallace's pehs. The famous freedom fighter seems to have chosen altogether the wrong place for opening his campaign, however. To really get noticed, he probably should have done it up the road a bit outside Boots just off the city square where it is always a lot busier. More people would have seen what he was doing and maybe some of them would have gladly joined in. You never know.

The Tay Road Bridge is a slender and gracefully sloping white structure which links Dundee with Fife across the River Tay. It was opened in 1966 by HM Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. Twenty cannons were fired to mark the occasion but they don't seem to have hit anything important as the bridge remained intact and the Queen Mum didn't even fall over.

Before the Queen Mother, the so-called "Tay Whale" was one of Dundee's most famous visitors when, in 1883, it accidently swam close to the city on the Tay. Nowadays it would certainly have attracted crowds of excited sightseers and maybe the BBC's Newsround and a helicopter or two but things were different back then. Upon realising that this upriver excursion was a pretty bad move on account of the fact that the city was home for a whole fleet of experienced and enthusiastic whalers, the poor creature wisely turned and headed for the North Sea but in the spirit of the times (and in some boats-obviously), it was relentlessly pursued, harpooned and eventually brought ashore near Stonehaven (and possibly made into pehs). Its bones now hang more or less in the right order from the ceiling of a city centre museum where it has whiled away the years regretting its wrong turning up the Tay and scaring generations of schoolchildren in revenge for its early demise.

The city had already had an earlier visit from a large mammal in 1706 although no harpoons were needed this time. An elephant apparently walked all the way to Dundee where it took one look and promptly died (possibly at the thought of having to have some pehs).

In the name of science, it was dissected by a local surgeon and Dundonians of the day had the chance to learn what the inside of an elephant looked like. This is something which few other Scottish cities could boast about.

Talking of animals, there is a small Zoo with over 300 of them inside the city's Camperdown Park (which would nearly be big enough for the bears alone). The park and the neo-classical mansion it contains were gifted to the family of Admiral Duncan who defeated the Dutch fleet at the Battle of Camperdown in 1797. Just why the Dutch went to the trouble of hauling their boats into a Scottish park all those years ago has never been explained. Perhaps they liked visiting zoos. A statue of Admiral Duncan has been specially erected in the city to hide the plaque about William Wallace (see above).

At 572 feet high, the Law Hill dominates the Dundee skyline and the summit is the site of an Iron Age fort called Dun Taigh which quite good-naturedly lends its name to the modern city even although we can't spell it properly. The Dundee Law is actually an ancient plugged volcano although it is not clear who was brave even to insert the plug (nor where he found an ironmongers with a plug big enough for the job). This act of civic heroism should surely merit a statue in the city to hide the one of Admiral Duncan.

An upper deck seat on one of the open topped bus trips around the Law Hill's narrow and tightly spiraling road is an absolute must for terrifying visitors to the city. (i.e. for visitors whom you wish to terrify even if they are already terrifying in themselves). These bus trips are available in summer only (Take a raincoat).

Pedants, and they do occur even in Dundee, will sometimes stop you in mid-sentence to tell you that it is technically incorrect to use the phrase "the Law Hill". Apparently, the word "Law" simply means "hill" anyway. So, if left unchecked by these guardians of spoken correctness, you carelessly put the two words together you are effectively saying "the hill hill" (no doubt to a background ripple of tutting and smirks from passing linguistic experts). This may indeed be bad English but it is no fun for anyone except the pedants. It is however, strange that they never ever accuse you of saying "the Law law". Why is that?
A top seat on that bus should sort them out.

Oh, and the Law Hill (see? I just don't care) had a railway tunnel cut right through it simply because it was in the way when the Victorians were at their most manic phase of railway building. The line has long since closed but local rumour has it that two or three nineteenth century steam engines remain walled up in the darkness of the disused tunnel to this day. The drivers will be able to claim a fair whack of back pay if they ever manage to break out of the side of the hill hill.

Dundee has an entire housing estate in which the dwellings are built from thousands of sheet metal plates left over from the World war II ship-building industry. Dundee City Council showed uncharacteristic wisdom when they decided against fitting full size ships' funnels instead of conventional domestic chimneys to the houses. The houses are still in use today and were predictably painted an attractive battleship grey using excess Admiralty paint stocks.

Jute, Jam and Journalism. (Every article about Dundee must contain those words in that order. It's a by-law).

All three industries played a huge role in the city's former prosperity but only journalism survives today (although that is hotly debated by West coasters) with the DC Thomson publishing company still being one of the city's largest employers.

Apart from publishing such journalistic jewels as the Sunday Post, and the People's Friend, DC Thomson have been responsible for the production of such cult comic figures as Denis the Menace, the Bash Street Kids and Desperate Dan who was very fond of cow pie (or peh). Some of these characters have been heard of outside of Dundee.

DCs are famously averse to advertising and determinedly use a fleet of umarked grey vans for business. (Battleship grey as it happens).

Standing within the length of a misplaced drop kick of each other, Tannadice Park and Dens Park are the two closest senior football stadia in the country. Much to the chagrin of Dundee United fans, their ground, Tannadice, is famously on the site of a former rubbish dump. Nowadays, it is thought that reinstating the dump would provide increased entertainment opportunities in the area.

United enjoyed some success in the early eighties and actually won the Scottish Premier League and three League Cups. Their latest success (which came in 1994) was their only Scottish Cup trophy (in their seventh, yes, seventh, (7th) final). They followed up this success with relegation from the Scottish Premier League in the very next season.
The other team, Dundee FC, is often described in football-speak as a "sleeping giant". This club certainly appears to be enjoying one terrific snooze seeing as their last major trophy was won away back in 1974 and crowd sizes at Dens Park struggle to live up to any desription involving the word "giant".

Unlike the famous mindful bigotry which is unfortunately associated with Glasgow Celtic and Rangers a country breadth away, there is no religious history attached to the two Dundee clubs. The United fans are affectionately known as Arabs because some of them once wore towels on their heads for a bet. The Dundee fans are still mostly asleep (see above).

Famous musicians from Dundee have included the saxophonist with The Average White Band, Lou Reed's bass player, most of the guys in Deacon Blue, and the chances are, given the size of the band, at least one member of Showaddywaddy.

It is a little known fact that the parts of Queen's celebrated Bohemian Rhapsody video where the band are seen performing on stage (and not in those mesmerising studio-generated special effects) were filmed at Dundee's Caird Hall while the band were on tour.

Midge Ure of Ultravox, Visage and Midge Ure fame was most probably sick in Dundee after eating a peh.

William Topaz MacGonagall (1830-1902), a famous poet and tragedian, grew up and lived his life in Dundee. Like Captain Scott (see above) he is another one with a cracking middle name. MacGonagall is widely aknowledged as the worst poet the world of literature has ever had to put up with and has generated many appreciation societies the world over in fond recognition of this fact. He made a career for himself as an appalling poet and actor although his self belief never appeared to waver for a moment. Perhaps it was all a clever act.

Among his best remembered poems is a record of the Tay Rail Bridge Disaster of 1789 (An event which incidentally, must be mentioned in any article about Dundee according to the same by-law as above).

The poem begins....

"Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay!

Alas! I am very sorry to say

That ninety lives have been taken away

On the last Sabbath day of 1879,

Which will be remember'd for a very long time."

.....and does not improve.

Many Dundonians will try tell you that they were born in nine wells. This is a quite extraordinary claim given the obvious difficulties of even attempting childbirth down a single well. Most were probably born in a hospital somewhere in the city.

Population 145 000