Gig review: Jimmie MacGregor's Gathering

Jimmie MacGregor brought his 50-plus years of performing experience to bear lightly on this informal two-hour saunter through his back pages, reflecting the diversity of his career with songs, jokes, slideshow memories, poems and opinions in which he has been persuaded to indulge on account of his 80th birthday last year.

MacGregor may be a respected veteran but is still young enough to have all his own hair and to refer to his "favourite old person". He is also hip to the times, opening the show with a 21st-century recession blues which lamented "the good times are a-comin' but they don't say when".

Given this wry assessment, the only way to look was back, and MacGregor gave good nostalgia, accompanying himself on folk standards known to many of the audience members, hailing old friends in the room and breaking out the vernacular with a seamless recitation of his Scots dialect rhyming version of the story of David and Goliath and a musical satire on Scottish hospitality.

Although his reminiscences of encounters with John Wayne and Edward G Robinson had the ring of typical chat show anecdotes, MacGregor is not much given to extravagant expressions of showbiz emotion – Elizabeth Taylor was described as a "cuddly wee wummin" – but he got round this by leaning more towards his musical influences and the work of his associates on the White Heather Club and the Tonight programme. Even more personal and fascinating were his touring tales of Jimmy Shand and other gigging experiences around the world.

In this way, the show found its balance of the local and the global, the personal and the political, though there is room for more rigorous definition of the content without sacrificing the relaxed intimacy which made this a comfortable, though not necessarily gentle, Gathering.