He seems more relaxed, less tired, than I've known him previously. Maybe this is because he is doing fewer jobs. When he started as director of Glasgow 99, he was also simultaneously writing for the Guardian, teaching in Vienna, and curating the odd exhibition while trying to hold down a home life in London - which combination did not exactly make for an easy life, even if it was great for Air Miles. But gradually, as Glasgow 99 built up, the other jobs fell away. At the same time, criticism diminished somewhat. Instead, there is now a critical mass going. The Year, with all the staff running it, is getting to be self-generating. Deyan can enjoy the fruits of delegation, and even get to be a bit statesmanlike in his dark suits, though he still needs intensive training before he'll ever cut it as an orator. The lunchtime conversation over a bottle of Pomerol is more his forte.

"I had no idea what it would be like to do the project," he reflects, "but I remember saying at the interview that this was a great job for anyone who cares about architecture and design - probably the best since the Festival of Britain in 1951. That has proved to be true, actually."

The first year, inevitably, was the hardest. "There was a lot of tension and expectation. There was a sense that 1999 would give Glasgow a Mediterranean climate, that we'd open a car factory on Glasgow Green, and stimulate a general urban renaissance. We had to sit down and work out what we could really do, what money was really available, and what a year of architecture and design should really be."

He admits that trying to meet everyone's expectations without diluting the overall impact, and introducing a populist streak without dumbing down, was hard. And of course he has had to live with the self-image of the place. "The city has such a character. People say - that's not very Glasgow. You'd never find someone saying - that's not very Bournemouth."

One of his stated missions is to raise the profile of Glasgow as a place for designers to be - to promote design rather than trade and industry, to come to terms with the idea of a post-industrial city. "There's a very strong tradition of producing design graduates - but 80 per cent of them leave immediately. It's a haemorrhage. I have to find reasons to make them stay."

The "Glasgow Collection", he says, is an attempt at a more pro-active version of the Design Council's old "funded consultancy" scheme. Instead of merely responding to requests, the Collection actively goes out to instigate projects, and can do so thanks to an £750,000 endowment from the Glasgow Development Agency. "They have to be products which appeal to the non-specialist, that have some kind of charisma and personality. It's not to do with whole-body scanners or the blades of jet engines, wonderful though those things are." Which being translated, means: let's leave the dull, worthy stuff to the civil servants, and get on with producing some new value-added cult objects.