It’s Manchester’s first ever Grubby Comedy night. The sold-out audience at the Red Bank Project, a recently renovated arts space, is ready to watch a lineup of local acts, including Edinburgh Comedy award-nominated sketch duo The Delightful Sausage, aka Amy Gledhill and Chris Cantrill.

“We’re lucky to be in a city where there is this appetite for alternative stuff,” says Gledhill. Four years ago, Gledhill (originally from Hull) and Cantrill (Bradford) relocated from London to Manchester. The Delightful Sausage began as the name of their DIY comedy night, a precursor to Grubby. “One of us would dress up as a sausage and the other would dress up as a butcher,” Gledhill says. “It was mad, but really different.”

That will be no surprise to anyone who has seen the pair’s hilarious show Ginster’s Paradise, a visit to a twisted British holiday camp, where silliness meets darkness as they “channel Brexit anxiety”, says Cantrill. When they first paired up, they were even more abstract. “A big part of our first show was yeast: there was a yeast businessman, we won some yeast, yeast could cure stuff,” Gledhill says. “We just thought yeast was funny.”

Cantrill and Gledhill both do standup, but Manchester gave them the space to collaborate on weirder stuff. They soon met other alternative acts. Many had also created their own nights: Sham Bodie, an experimental mixed bill from John Stansfield and Ben Tonge; Flim Nite, where performers create sets based on famous movies; and offerings from some of Grubby’s lineup – character-heavy night Quippodrome with Jack Evans and Jain Edwards, and Jim John Harkness’s open mic Entertainment Club.

The Delightful Sausage get surreal on Grubby Comedy night at Red Bank Project. Photograph: James Darcey/J Darcey Images

Even if you’re baffled by experimental comedy, Manchester has something for you. The MEN Arena and Lowry theatre host TV-famous names, while the Comedy Store and the Frog and Bucket provide big weekend shows and amateur nights. Meanwhile, Toby Hadoke’s long-running XS Malarkey “bridges the gap between alternative DIY and glossy Saturday-night comedy,” Gledhill says.In Manchester, big names share bills with newcomers, says Bethany Black, who’s been doing standup in the city for two decades and grew up in nearby Chorley. “Really quickly you’d end up working with people you’d seen on telly.” A few gigs in, she’d played alongside Alan Carr and Jason Manford.

Standup Rachel Fairburn grew up in north Manchester and began her comedy career here around 10 years ago with a course at the Comedy Store. She’s played pretty much every gig in the city, including “unsung hero” The Comedy Balloon – a weekly open mic run by Jason Cooke for 20 years. “The Manchester scene should big it up more because it’s always been good,” Fairburn says.

You come on after a meat raffle and people are tutting because they wanted a tribute act instead

Like any workplace, Fairburn says, the comedy scene has its politics – the community’s small enough that everyone knows everyone else’s business – but people like Cooke consistently support Manchester acts. At the Frog and Bucket, Jessica Toomey, who helps run Manchester’s Women in Comedy festival, recently took over from her dad, founder Dave Perkin, and has been diversifying lineups. “She’s booking more women, there’s lots more variation in acts,” says Black.

Manchester’s universities have given the comedy circuit many graduates. Fairburn’s All Killa No Filla podcast co-host Kiri Pritchard-McLean and her sketch group Gein’s Family Giftshop went to Salford University, whose alumni include Peter Kay and Peter Slater. The tech comedy group Foxdog Studios are computer science graduates of Manchester University, where Joe Lycett and Lou Sanders studied.

Here for the scene … Tony Wright. Photograph: Foxdog Studios

Others come here specifically for comedy. Grubby’s MC Sean Morley has travelled from Sheffield. Black praises “fantastic” new standup Tony Wright, who grew up in Kent but now does comedy here. She also reminisces about “Little Tyneside” – a house where Geordie comics lived together – and is currently writing a sitcom about her year in a grotty Manchester flatshare with four other comedians.

“There’s no whiff of drama school,” Morley says of the local standup scene. “Comedy is still very much a working-class artform here.” Morley describes the “backbone of Manchester comedy” as being: “Everything’s a mess, but we’ve managed to get people together in a pub, so let’s make the best of it. It’s a roll-your-sleeves-up attitude.”

Gledhill agrees: “‘Down to earth’ is probably the best way to describe it. There’s an honesty to it, less ego involved. We’re quicker to talk about gross or sad stuff, in a way that’s not sentimental.” Cantrill adds: “But with a rich seam of sarcasm.” Fairburn recognises this in her own standup: “You’re a bit sarcastic and you like taking the piss, but it’s always done in a way that is not offensive. When you grow up in Manchester, that’s the humour, you take the piss out of each other constantly.”

Audiences here can make comedians work hard for laughs – which can be beneficial. “A lot of acts get very good at comedy very quickly, because the audiences tend to be tougher,” says Fairburn. Part of the skill comes from playing Manchester’s spectrum of nights: “If you can make all those different people laugh, then you’re a good comedian.”

Many acts develop “an edge” from this, Cantrill says: “Once you’ve followed a meat raffle and people are tutting because they wanted a tribute act instead, when you do a gig that doesn’t go exactly how you want, you’re like, ‘This is easy!’”

At Grubby, Morley guides us playfully through the night. He introduces Harkness’s character of a failing entertainer veering towards a breakdown, then Edwards’s pleasingly offbeat stand-up featuring a dog-less Crufts routine. Evans brings self-described “chaos energy” with his set, and Foxdog Studios link our phones to their projector for a finale of interactive musical comedy. The audience is in hysterics throughout. In Manchester, that must mean even higher praise than usual.