The day before his duties at that 1990 edition, held in the Kelvin Hall, the Duke had observed while attending a Glasgow gallery of modern art: "If you look at the way the paint drops are running, you will know which way to hang it."

While Prince Philip’s diplomatic skills have remained largely the same since then - he would surely have found the wondrous collection of classical and Impressionist paintings across the road at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum more to his taste - much else has changed.

The venue, most notably. the Emirates Arena, built ahead of Glasgow’s highly successful staging of the 2014 Commonwealth Games, will host three days of action, including a defence of the women’s 1500 and 3,000 metres titles by Scotland’s own Laura Muir.

Twenty-nine-years ago home athletics fans witnessed another one of their own - Tom McKean - win European indoor gold with a flawless piece of front running in the 800m final.

McKean, who lived just 10 minutes’ walk away from the Kelvin Hall, later joined Strathclyde Police after his notably dramatic athletics career had come to an end.

At times he would rise superbly to the challenge, as in his epic 800m race at the 1986 European Championships in Stuttgart, where he and fellow Britons Steve Cram and Sebastian Coe swept the medals, with Coe edging out the Scot for gold in the final strides.

McKean had also earned a World Cup win and three European Cup titles before toeing the line in his home city - but he did so having suffered the disappointment of finishing only seventh in the Commonwealth Games final in Auckland a couple of months earlier.

It was another debit mark following his ill-fated appearance in the 800m final at the 1987 IAAF World Championships, where he suffered an early injury in the race and finished last, earning cruel headlines featuring the word "McFlop".

Fittingly, the glorious victory of Sunday evening was constructed on fragile foundations from the day before.

In what was only his second indoor race following an appearance at the same venue against East Germany a fortnight earlier, McKean stuttered through his opening heat before staggering twice during his semi-final  as more experienced indoor performers, Martin Enholm of Sweden and Jose Arconada of Spain, moved roughly past him. Welcome to the boards…

"That was the most physical race Tommy has been involved with, inside or out," said McKean’s relieved coach Tommy Boyle.

But the following day McKean put it all together in a final he dominated from the gun, finishing five metres clear in a winning time of 1min 46.22sec, with Tomas de Tereza of Spain taking silver in 1:47.22 and bronze going to Poland’s Zbigniew Janus in 1:47.37.

As he received the home acclaim while standing on the podium, his single earring glinting and with a hint of bleach in his hair, McKean was enjoying the first part of what was to be the most profitable year of his career - that summer he would go on to win the European outdoor 800m title in similar style.

Two years after that he would add the world indoor 800m title to his CV after another front-running flourish in Toronto.  An hour after that he would miss his medal presentation  because he had been delayed returning from the press benches – where he had made a lengthy call home to his beloved - and been caught out by the notoriously dilatory lift within the event venue of the Skydome, more usually host to Toronto’s Blue Jays MLB side…

McKean’s task in the Kelvin Hall that Sunday afternoon had  been made appreciably easier by the withdrawal from the final of his compatriot Brian Whittle, who was suffering from a chest infection.

That was rotten timing for an athlete whose own career was not short of drama, most notably at the European Championships that had taken place four years earlier in Stuttgart.

Setting off for the British team on the third leg of the 4x400m final, Whittle lost one of his shoes after it was trodden on by the incoming baton-carrier, Kriss Akabusi.

The game Scot thus had to run the entire circuit with a single shoe on. He recorded a personal best time of 45.09sec and he, Akabusi, Derek Redmond and Roger Black took the gold medal.

The career of the latest Scottish athletics icon, Muir, has also been dramatic thus far.

As a relatively unheralded 22-year-old veterinary student, albeit one who had reached the 800m semi-finals at the 2013 World Championships in Moscow, she announced herself to the wider world in 2015 with a startling victory over 1500 metres at the  IAAF Diamond League meeting in Oslo.

A world-class field woke up too late to the realisation that the British athlete who had gone with the pacemakers and then pushed on to earn a 40 metres lead at the bell had judged things to perfection.

"I heard them coming as the crowd got louder," Muir said. “But I managed to keep on running and won my first ever Diamond League. I think this is the biggest win of my career."

A year later, in pursuit of an even bigger win, Muir - by then British record holder - paid for her boldness in the Olympic 1500m in Rio de Janeiro as she went for broke before fading to seventh place.

But a year later, at the last running of the European Athletics Indoor Championships in Belgrade, it all come together for her as she earned the gold medals she will defend this weekend.

She also provided the world of athletics with another unexpected moment of Scottish athlete drama. Having completed the first part of her planned double, breaking  the 32-year-old Championship record for 1500m in so doing, Muir faced another challenge in the form of a female track official preventing her running a lap of honour.

A shimmy and sidestep which would not have disgraced that other celebrated Scottish performer in a different sporting age and sphere, Jimmy Johnstone, took the new champion past the lady in the blazer - and after collecting the Union flag Muir completed one of the speediest celebrations ever witnessed as the stadium prepared for the women’s 400m final. 

"I had to fight for that didn’t I!" Muir said. "The lady was just saying, 'We don’t have time', but for my first medal I’m not going to lose out on my lap of honour."

Should she prove successful in one or both of her title defences at the Emirates Arena, it is scenario not likely to be repeated…