Mark Steel's tailor-made fun steals the show in Shrewsbury

The full house – white, mostly middle-aged and all confirmed fans of that most middle-class institution, Radio 4 – cheer, laugh and clap with approval.

"But then someone told me Ukip do well here," Steel continues. "What are you scared of, that there'll be one foreigner?"

This Shrewsbury edition of Mark Steel's In Town, the long-running radio series in which the comedian visits a different location each week and delivers a tailor-made stand-up routine based on his findings, has certainly proved a big draw.

The queue for Wednesday's 7.30pm recording was forming well before 6pm, and at one point stretched around the side of the building and into the Frankwell car park.

"You are the politest crowd," Steel says when he comes on to the stage after the producer has told us to applaud his entrance. "If this was London and you were told to clap you'd be (adopting mock gangsta accent) 'Bro... I'll decide when to clap'."

Steel then describes Shrewsbury for the national audience who will tune in when this show goes out next month.

He describes the town "with its endless listed buildings, and riverside walks and floral displays, so that visitors walk round can't help but think 'you're a bit up yourselves here, aren't you?'"

This audience loves this good-natured ribbing, and Steel continues, reading from the thick script he has put together.

"Everything here is at least 500 years old. You see a 13th century castle and assume it's where a duke lives and it turns out to be Greggs the Bakers.

"So many important figures are connected with Shrewsbury. Michael Palin went to school here. Most famously Charles Darwin, who travelled the seas studying species, was from here, so some of the most prominent people to come from Shrewsbury are people prepared to go literally anywhere in the world not to stay here. There are 600 listed buildings. Everything seems to be Tudor or full of beams and unsuitable for anybody more than three foot six tall. The signs as you come in, instead of saying Shrewsbury welcomes careful drivers, they should say Shrewsbury, mind your head.

"And the cobbles . . . there are cobbles everywhere, which is a nice touch considering half the people trying to get around in this town are 90."

He continues in this vein for about two hours, looking at everything from the correct way to pronounce the town's name, the famous figures associated with it, local ghosts and the surrounding area.

"Do you know where I went last year that I thought was brilliant?" he asks. "Much Wenlock. That's where the Olympics was invented. And then I went there and it's about six inches long. The hundred metres must have been nine laps of the whole town. The discus would have gone straight through someone's window."

He asks if anyone in the audience is from Much Wenlock and a few people cheer.

"Right," says Steel.

"That means the whole town's empty. Let's go and burgle it."

Afterwards, in his dressing room, he says he is pleased with the way the show was received, particularly the way members of the audience shouted out extra information.

"People are witty," he says. "This is the sixth series of this and I don't think we're yet to come across a place where there aren't a collection of people who are really enthusiastic about where they live.

"The audience is a huge part of it. Without the audience it wouldn't make much sense."

The writing process for each script – and by the end of the new series he will have written 37 – takes several weeks, and unlike a conventional comedy tour, there is no time to hone the material. The first time an audience hears it is during the recording.

"It is a great job because everywhere is so different," he says.

He describes how the previous night he had found himself locked out of his town centre hotel when a car containing four lads went by and they shouted a mild obscenity at him. "And then they went around the ring road and did it again."

He chuckles at the memory. "It wouldn't have been like that in London."

By Andrew Owen