From penny-pinching misers to sentimental soaks, Scotland has no shortage of comedy stereotypes. But, asks Graeme Virtue on the eve of the Magners Glasgow Festival, do we also have a national sense of humour?

IN a recent episode of Mock The Week - one that's probably being repeated on Dave as you read these words - Frankie Boyle uncharacteristically lost his comedic thread. Attempting to amplify (and therefore usurp) a studiedly offbeat observation by fellow regular Russell Howard, the ever-abrasive Scottish stand-up faltered. As the audience hooted at his hesitation, Boyle quickly got himself together. "I'm trying to do whimsy!" he cried, "Look what happens!" It's probably safe to hazard that Boyle does not count The Mighty Boosh among his influences.

It's not that Scots can't do whimsy. Twinkling Des Clarke, one of the stand-ups in the impressive pool of homegrown talent at the Magners Glasgow International Comedy Festival, often skews his views to amuse, while fellow attendee Phil Kay was cheerfully encouraging audiences to chuck their shoes on stage years before TV reporter Muntadhar al-Zaidi got George Bush in his sights. But the predominant stereotype of the Scottish sense of humour has something of the Glasgow kiss about it: unvarnished, wicked, concussive patter, forged in a west coast, working-class tradition of kicking against the Scottish "cringe" while pacing that short distance from gallus to gallows humour.

Under the spotlight, Boyle is a convincingly exasperated misanthrope who holds his nerve until every last member of the audience is compelled to laugh at his thrillingly scabrous pronouncements, just to release the tension (it helps that he's also genuinely hilarious). In its most extreme expression - conjured by someone like Jerry Sadowitz, whose festival show is titled Comedian, Magician, Psychopath II - this grim, grinning comedic mode could be summarised thus: "A Scotsman walks into a bar and resumes drinking himself to death." Is it funny because it's horribly true?

Volatile boisterousness fuelled by crippling self-doubt: as perceived national characteristics go, it's perhaps not entirely desirable, but at least it's distinctive and, as such, marketable. And it helps that, in Billy Connolly, Scotland has a global comedy export as ubiquitous as single malt whisky. (If there are still countries that haven't heard of the Big Yin, he'll probably be steamrollering through them on that ridiculous three-wheeled hog sometime soon.) Over 30 years since his breakthrough, the one-time Humblebum's colossal influence still marbles the current Scottish comedy scene. Glasgow's looming laugh-in inevitably bears a certain welly-booted imprint: as well as the return of Gary Moir's notably faithful Big Yin Revisited tribute night at the Barrowland, Des McLean will unleash his mischievous impersonation of Connolly in his solo show The Big Chap at the Theatre Royal. Next year, maybe Moir and McLean could team up for a double bill: Jobbies For The Boys perhaps?

Obviously there was a vibrant Scottish comedy tradition before Connolly turned up and parked his bike somewhere inappropriate. The late bunnet-wearing word wizard Chic Murray casts a long shadow and remains a revered touchstone for would-be jokers alive to the "misunderstandable" possibilities of both the English and Scottish tongues. The mesmerising Rikki Fulton - either solo or teddy-boyed up with Jack Milroy as the indefatigable Francie and Josie - would be another of the always-hallowed, sometimes-swallied, patron saints of Scottish comedy.

It's tickling to imagine this eternal tartan pantheon hovering beatifically above the current crop of national talent, occasionally visiting unto them to offer undercutting advice like: "I kent your faither". Pause. "And yer punchline." Even in the afterlife, it's all in the timing.

While most native Scots have a deeply personal formulation of what might constitute a culturally specific sense of humour - a gag gestalt that would include everything from The Broons to Rab C Nesbitt, Gregory's Girl to Still Game (and even Dear Green Place, at a stretch) - to the wider world we're perceived as either bellowing alcoholics or sentimental jesters with an ear for ploughman's poetry. Again, Connolly is partly responsible.

His unerring ability to channel so many guttural Scottish voices - from overbearing mammies to canny jakeys - exposed the predominantly English viewers of Michael Parkinson's chat show to the evocative wonders of Scots vocabulary. In fact, the international view of our national sense and sensibility might be so refracted through Connolly, they probably believe that every Scotsman, woman and child sported a wee purple soul patch in 2002 as our de facto clan chieftain encouraged everyone to play the newly rechristened Lotto.

If this all sounds a bit too much like a west coast interpretation of Scottish humour, that's because it is; as a country, we basically surrendered Edinburgh in 1960 to the well-heeled, satirical, nonchalantly brilliant Oxbridge comedy of Beyond The Fringe. In the decades since, Edinburgh in August has become a launchpad (or ruthless conveyer belt, depending on your Sadowitz-ness) for popularising English and international comedy. It's an admirable achievement in its way, though it makes it almost impossible to imagine, after Harry Lauder, a high-profile comic who could ever be described as born-and-bred Edinburgh.

But of course, if you were to plot the salient points of Scottish comedy on a graph, it wouldn't be dominated entirely by men: Elaine C Smith, Karen Dunbar, Rhona Cameron, Janey Godley and rising star Susan Calman would be among the featured females, even if they would generally be outliers dotted around the main curve.

Such an imaginary chart would also suggest it might be possible to extrapolate where Scotland's comedic identity is headed, even as its manufacturing bedrock coughs its last alongside those irritatingly intangible industries - financial services, product assistance, something to do with customer support - that were lined up to replace it. But there is some hope.

BBC Scotland recently broadcast three new TV comedy pilots, and Brian Limond's Limmy's Show - based on his internet "plittering" rather than any stand-up experience - was easily the most intriguing. While Limmy's stubborn pranksterism may be offputting to traditionalists, there's an inherent, indignant moral righteousness braided into his material, combined with an admirable mastery of language. And the arena where Limmy sharpened his instincts - the web - could perhaps become an unlikely guardian of Scotland's comedy legacy: with the right sort of YouTube-based platform, the music-hall magic of Francie and Josie could live on in ways other than just Gerard Kelly's panto wig.

Now: does anyone else think the improvisational antics of Lorraine Kelly on GMTV are sort of continuing the fine tradition of Stanley Baxter? Well? Anyone?

The Sunday Herald is media partner of the Magners Glasgow International Comedy Festival, which runs from March 12-29, www.glasgowcomedyfestival.com, ticketline 0870 013 5464