Scott Agnew, The Stand, Glasgow

Scotland certainly loves its comedy. In addition to the month-long bliss that is the Edinburgh Fringe, just along the M8 Glasgow has been providing its own few weeks of fun since 2003. Their comedy festival has a very different feel to it - less of a comics’ gathering (they do one-nighters rather than residencies) and more of a busy schedule - but it’s all very enjoyable even so. Last night I saw local boy Scott Agnew, a 6ft 5in gay Glaswegian - not a phrase I have the opportunity to write very often.

Agnew was Scottish Comedian of the Year in 2008 and has been in the business for a few years after having started his professional life as a tabloid journalist. This wasn’t one of his Edinburgh shows, just a collection of stories from various acts over the years, which he called Tales, most of them sounding very tall indeed.

Although he recounts anecdotes about his family and people he meets in the street or in supermarkets, it’s not observational as such, although he has a keen ear for a weird phrase and is an accomplished mimic when he quotes various oddballs he has encountered. He has some very fine material, about being the only gay Catholic in a room full of Orangemen, his coming-out stories and explaining to his grandmother over a cup of tea and slice of Madeira cake what a fuck buddy is. He’s particularly funny about a diversity festival he was invited to perform at in Barnsley - “This bloke asked, 'You ’ere for the poofs show?' It makes it sound like Crufts for gays.” And he likes a bit of inventive swearing too, explaining for any non-Glaswegians in the audience his fellow city dwellers’ fondness for the c-word: “We don’t use it to describe a woman’s genitals. We use it to describe another human being.”

But, oh boy, could he do with an editor. Agnew’s stories, many of which start very promisingly indeed, meander into extended Pooterish observations, or “...and we were pishing ourselves, as you can imagine...” or most often a disappointingly limp payoff. And he sometimes stops a story mid-flow to ask if we know what an umlaut is, or to explain the significance of something he’s just said. It’s a shame because he’s a very likeable presence and has a nice turn of phrase when he wants - “Having a threesome is so complicated about what goes where. It takes more organisation than putting IKEA furniture together.” But his 90-minute show felt much longer.

Agnew was performing at The Stand. The club is the sister venue to the Edinburgh Stand, which was founded in the mid-1990s by Tommy Sheppard; Glasgow followed a few years later and now the two form Scotland’s premier comedy club. Sheppard possesses a wry humour himself. He was once a scion of the Glasgow Labour Party but was made redundant by Tony Blair, who didn’t care for Sheppard’s meaty working-class socialism; with his payoff Sheppard opened the Edinburgh venue and says he may yet rename it the Tony Blair Memorial Club.

Both venues are year-round and attract not just top-notch comics, but also those at the start of their career - he has an eye for talent, does Sheppard - and are great places to see comedy because the acts are given due respect. Punters who talk through the acts are not welcome, as a polite sign at the bar makes clear. Watching comedy here makes a refreshing change from mobile-phone-interrupted gigs elsewhere.

Among the few dozen other venues in the festival are bars, restaurants, student unions and theatres, in grand to intimate spaces. There’s understandably a lot of Celtic talent - another of last night’s gigs, a benefit at the King’s Theatre, was headlined by Glaswegian Frankie Boyle, with locals Fred MacAulay and Susan Calman also on the bill - but the festival throws its net wide, with British, American, Australian and Irish talent aplenty among the 200-plus comics appearing, most of whom are doing stand-up, but there is musical and sketch comedy too.

The vast majority of the acts appearing in the festival are established, so this isn’t the place to discover the next Ed Byrne or Jimmy Carr performing in a tiny, sweaty attic at the very start of their careers; in other words it’s not the Edinburgh Fringe, but then it’s not meant to be.

• The Glasgow Comedy Festival continues until 10 April

Watch a clip of Scott Agnew