Scotland's rising TV stars tell how Glasgow International Comedy Festival is giving the nation plenty to laugh about

From left to right: Iain Connell and Robert Florence in Burnistoun; Frankie Boyle; Susan Calman; Kevin Bridges; Greg McHugh as Gary: Tank Commander

"You ever tried voice recognition technology? They don't do Scottish accents," complains Iain Connell, as he and Robert Florence spend agitated minutes failing to get the lift to move ("Eleven! ELEVEN!"), eventually succumbing to anger and bellowing "Scotland, ya bastard!" and "Freedom!" Upstart, self-deprecating and more than a little surreal, Burnistoun reflects the frustrated, alternative and, on occasion, cartoonishly aggressive sensibilities of contemporary Scottish comedy – assured enough to play around with stereotypes, yet still struggling to ingratiate itself with London-based commissioners.

Burnistoun has won critical acclaim on both sides of the Border, and found a wider audience through the iPlayer and internet – the lift sketch has had more than one-and-a-half million views on YouTube – but it remains a Scottish concern, moving from BBC Two Scotland to BBC One Scotland when it returns next month. "Burnistoun is made specifically for BBC Scotland," says Florence, "though I know people behind the scenes are desperately lobbying for it to go network."

A decade after the first scripts he and Connell wrote for Chewin' The Fat, Florence points to Gary: Tank Commander and Limmy's Show, both recent Comedy Unit productions for BBC Scotland, as evidence "there's a really exciting comedy scene up here just now, a good feeling that everyone's aware of".

The Stand Comedy Club and the Magners Glasgow International Comedy Festival, which returns this week, have been key to fostering such optimism. Gary: Tank Commander, Limmy's Show and David Kay's Radio 4 series Modrin McDonald: 21st Century Wizard all took formative steps at the now defunct Rough Cuts showcase at the Stand in Glasgow, a venue which also saw Frankie Boyle test out material for the counter-cultural – arguably excessively so – Tramadol Nights. Dabster Productions recently filmed a pilot of Live At The Stand, echoing STV's The Funny Farm and the BBC's Live Floor Show as showcases that pushed Scottish stand-ups like Fred MacAulay and Boyle towards the spotlight.

Florence, who was also a writer on Tramadol Nights, likens live performers to comedy's foot soldiers, at the sharp end of recognising and shaping tastes. According to Tommy Sheppard, the Stand's director, unprecedented numbers of wannabes are now seeking the challenge of his clubs' open mic nights. " "And I think at the Red Raw showcases we're doing (at the Comedy Festival], in conjunction with the BBC, the quality of acts is higher than ever too."

Now in its ninth year, the Magners Glasgow International Comedy Festival is Europe's biggest comedy-only festival. It has swelled from selling 22,000 tickets to 85,000, and offers a platform to upcoming Scottish comics who could be overlooked in the expensive, fiercely competitive crucible of the Edinburgh Fringe. For Susan Calman, recently commissioned to write a sitcom script for BBC Two, the festival afforded her "an invaluable" opportunity to perform a first hour-long solo show. It nurtured a young Kevin Bridges' big gig experience and his building of a sizeable Scottish following years before he was nominated for Best Newcomer at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards, honing a style that saw him take over hosting duties on Channel 4's Stand Up For The Week last night.

Nevertheless, there seems to be a glass ceiling for Scottish talent. Greg McHugh, writer and star of Gary: Tank Commander, is hugely frustrated at the lack of feedback he's received for the sitcom.

Despite being sold to Australian channel ABC2, the show has failed to transfer to BBC Three, "which is for trying out new comedy, for risk-taking".

"We beat the network share of the audience every week that Gary was on. So is there a suggestion that that audience doesn't really count because people in Scotland are so different from those in England, Wales or Northern Ireland? When audiences for these shows are rising and I'm getting messages from people down south saying 'I've just found your programme online, why's it not on here?' the annoyance really builds."

BBC One's new controller Danny Cohen has said he wants to broaden the class base of the corporation's comedy. He could do worse than look beyond a token recommissioning of the diminished Rab C Nesbitt to Burnistoun, Gary: Tank Commander and Limmy's Show, with their smattering of blue collar and no collar creations, such as Burnistoun's perennially tracksuited patterers Peter and Scott, or Limmy's recovering heroin addict Jacqueline McCafferty. These three shows contrast sharply with middle-class sitcoms The Old Guys and Life Of Riley, shot at BBC Scotland's Pacific Quay headquarters in Glasgow but written and performed by predominantly English talent.

Instead of the regressive, expletive-peppered Mrs Brown's Boys – for which a man in women's clothes is deemed intrinsically funny – why didn't BBC One pick up the more endearing Gary, in which the squaddies' dragged-up recreation of pop diva hits in YouTube-style sequences reflects a strong, widespread concern about soldiers' boredom and fear while serving in the Middle East? And just how many comedy fans and influential writers like Father Ted creator Graham Linehan and Peep Show producer Robert Popper need to champion Limmy's Show before it gets a shot at a wider audience?

For Gus Beattie, executive producer for radio at the Comedy Unit, the Billericay and Barry-set Gavin And Stacey, with its real sense of region and widespread appeal, heralded a false dawn. "Watching the British Comedy Awards, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish output really wasn't reflected," he notes. "There still seems to be a London-centric, south of England feel to network output. Hopefully though, that will change.

"If you look at the Burnistoun lift sketch, it's not about being Scottish. People in Manchester and Liverpool know the frustration of phoning an automated telephone line when it can't make out your twang. There are clever ways to have a sense of region and allow the humour to travel."

Beattie produced AL Kennedy's sitcom Laverloch Findo Speaks, which airs on BBC Radio Scotland this month. He is also developing a sketch show, A Twist Of William And Greg, for Radio 4 with McHugh and his collaborator Will Andrews.

For a sense of regional output, Beattie suggests TV ought to learn from Radio 4, which is set to expand its comedy slate with the rebranding of digital channel Radio 7 into Radio 4 Extra. When he and writer-performers Sanjeev Kohli and Donny McLeary conceived Fags, Mags And Bags, the Writers' Guild Award-winning, newsagent-set sitcom starting a fourth series on Radio 4 next month, "we wrestled with the notion of whether we should set it in Scotland, because you're conditioned to believe it could never work on the network. We had a lot of debate about basing it down south."

The station's comedy commissioner Caroline Raphael was insistent, though. "She said, 'don't be daft, it's a Scottish production company, it's Scottish talent, absolutely set it in Scotland!' I'm so glad we did, because everyone's familiar with corner shops. And the Scottishness reflects the charm of the show. I've become really confident now about making shows set here. I actively encourage it."

STV dipped into comedy production last year with Forward Slash Comedy's showcase of sketch performers, but there are no plans to revive the online-only initiative, and any forthcoming plans seem to consist solely of a co-production with Channel 4 featuring journalist Caitlin Moran. Notwithstanding such singular projects as Armando Iannucci's vice-president sitcom Veep for US broadcaster HBO, Skye-based Young Films' co-production of The Inbetweeners movie and Kevin Bridges' hosting of Channel 4's stand-up showcase Stand Up For The Week, Scottish comedy broadcasting is virtually the exclusive domain of the Comedy Unit and BBC.

Meanwhile, Calman notes with alarm the number of grassroots Scottish gigs disappearing as pubs close in the recession, robbing new acts of valuable stage time and depriving punters of a chance to see performers who don't feature on television. She urges new stand-ups to travel and perform elsewhere, especially London, "because it will make them a better comic and it's important Scottish comedians get exposure in other places". McHugh feels he can't "fully capitalise" on Gary's success if he remains in Scotland and will be moving to the English capital for a second time soon. Florence and Connell have just had a script commissioned by Channel 4, but the former points to a "drying up" of opportunities for writers across the UK as reason enough for them to create a Scottish production company along the lines of an indie record label.

"When we began there were a lot of places you could submit material to, unsolicited, but there are far fewer now," he explains. "All the same, there's a wee bit of buzz about Scottish comedy and we want to try and find new writers and performers, really collaborate and shorten the time it takes for them to see their work realised."

Calman hopes to shoot her sitcom at Pacific Quay, with "an ensemble cast with equal numbers of English and Scottish". "It won't hide its Scottishness but I won't need everyone wearing kilts and getting drunk," she says. "It feels like a number of Scots are on the cusp of breaking through to something really good, knocking hard on network doors. And at some point soon, it's going to happen."

The Magners Glasgow International Comedy Festival runs from Thursday until 10 April and includes dates by Greg McHugh (Stand Comedy Club, Saturday) and Susan Calman (Citizens Theatre, 6 April). Burnistoun begins on BBC One Scotland on 4 April