Though it was filmed at Glasgow’s 3,000-capacity Clyde Auditorium – aka the ‘Armadillo’ – Des McLean’s new DVD is a surprisingly underwhelming offering.

He starts falteringly, with lots of hesitant ‘how are you doing?’ and hellos to individual members of the audience, as if he was an open spot performing his first faltering gig to friends and family. And although his performance grows in confidence, the material remains wobbly, with half-formed observations crying out for more polish, insight, or purpose.

Anecdotes often just disintegrate into nothing. There’s a story about going out drinking with some American airmen that made him feel insecure – though that’s not made funny – then ends with him having a hangover the next morning, while the pilots were fine. That’s the whole story, barely small-talk, let alone a honed routine.

Otherwise, the subjects are tediously familiar. He takes a long description of buying vibrators in a sex shop, for instance, –boy aren’t they intimidating! – topped with two near-identical punchlines for the hands-free device. Maybe you could do the wallpaper while using it. Maybe you can now the lawn when using it.

Elsewhere, there’s more drinking stories, limp observations about late-night sign-language interpreters having to mime rude words on TV, and plenty of references to Glasgow’s working-class neds. Plunge McNugget is a character he created for his local radio show, which the audience are well aware of – even if it means nothing outside Glasgow. If you don’t know the Plunge Anthem, which he treats as if it’s as familiar to his audience as Flower Of Scotland, you probably shouldn’t bother with this DVD.

It is, indeed, a very parochial show, with jokes about specific Celtic-supporting pubs versus Rangers ones, local football commentators and the scandal that engulfed city council leader Steven Purcell likely to leave anyone outside Clydeside cold.

In his favour… well, he’s quite good at voices.

The DVD is also shot in a very peculiar way. There is no camera trained at him face-on, so much of the routine is filmed from below his left nostril, at an obtuse angle. But they have paid for a crane camera, so you get lots of swooping shots over the auditorium, which tend to make him look tiny on a vast stage. Plus a lot of interrupting heckles and his perfunctory responses are kept in, even though they add nothing.

And an extra in which he impersonates Billy Connolly for a World Tour of Glasgow – snippets of which punctuate the main feature – reveals every weakness in his two-dimensional mimicry – relying mainly on him saying ‘brilliant’ every 37 seconds. It’s probably the only time that adjective will be used in conjunction with this sub-par DVD.

Des Mclean: Is This The Way To Armadillo?
Recorded at: Clyde Auditorium, Glasgow
Running time: 81 min
Extras 9mins of him pretending to be Billy Connolly
Released by: Alba Home Vision, November 8
Price: £19.99. Click here to buy from Amazon at £14.99