Near the end of our conversation, Scottish writer and comedian Limmy paints me a moral dilemma.

“People who give off about fat-shaming and body-shaming are often the same people who talk about Trump’s hair or how fat he is, or how old he is. The size of his hands and his fingers – that’s the big one: let’s all have a big laugh at his hands. I was thinking, there are people out there who have wee hands. They’re decent people, they’re kids even, but they’ve got wee fingers. Maybe not like a medical condition, but how do they feel when they hear all this?”

Considering our conversation took place some time before a rogue McDonald’s employee seized the mega corporation’s Twitter account to make reference to the Donald’s diminutive digits, Limmy’s own regulation-scale fingers appear remarkably close to the pulse. “Having said that, it’s not really the sort of thing you’d get bullied about in school, so I’m talking shite – but still.”

This instinct for playful moralising is something fans of Brian Limond's comedy know well. His Twitter account, live shows and books all showcase this same brand of hyperaware commentary, while his seminal sketch series, Limmy's Show!, bristled with more ideas and laughs than any other comedy of the last decade. Now available on Netflix, its three series are a recent benchmark for ambitious, character-driven sketch comedy, featuring a gamut of uncanny performances from its creator.

Petty crime addiction

There's Mr Mulvaney, the executive struggling to get a grip on his addiction to petty crime. Or Dee Dee, the unhinged stoner who might jump on a bus to a random town, or explore space in a cardboard box spaceship in his living room. Or Falconhoof, the put-upon presenter of a fantasy roleplaying game played out via callers to a Scottish cable channel. Bleak and ingenious, Limmy's Show! garnered huge acclaim, although its creator hasn't made another TV project since.

"I was absolutely sure one thing I sent would be picked up," he says, recalling a sitcom he'd pitched some years after Limmy's Show! ended. "They invited me down to London to talk about one script. I was thinking, would they really make me come all the way down to London for a 'no'? They know I live in Glasgow, so surely they wouldn't get me down for a 10-minute meeting and say no. So I went down to London and they said 'we love it, it's fantastic, it's almost poetic'," – his voice dropping to a smug, keening welp in advance of the planet-sized "but" that's surely arriving – "'buuuuut, we think it's more of a comedy drama, so we're going to have to pass. Honestly though, we wouldn't change a thing.' "

Barring the time and money wasted on public transport, Limmy doesn’t actually appear too bothered with commissioners, and displays a wary disregard for the “cult favourite” descriptor that often shows up when broadsheets lament his absence from the network schedules.

“The word ‘cult’ is almost a nice way of saying a lot of people hate you, or have never heard of you. It means someone can come up to me in the street who’s really into my stuff, who’s seen everything I’ve done, but the guy standing beside them has no idea who I am. Even in Glasgow. I think that’s cult.”

A web developer who dabbled in funny videos and flash plugins, Limmy’s initial break came when a DVD of his site’s offerings found its way to production company The Comedy Unit. Impressed with his work, they took a punt and in 2009 Limmy suddenly found himself writing, starring in and directing a pilot. It was picked up by BBC Scotland, leading to a six-part series, for which he assumed the same global responsibility. For a first time at everything, this was a strangely brave choice for a risk-averse industry.

Directing

“Where they really took a chance was in letting me direct the series,” says Limmy. “I could see them being okay with me directing the pilot, since three-quarters of the videos were already there in some form from my website; they just needed to be reshot professionally. But to actually let me direct a whole series of six episodes, to undertake six weeks of filming, that was a chance they took. I’d never directed before; I was learning on the job.”

Is he tempted to take these skills on the road, putting in a turn as an actor, or director for hire? “I don’t know,” he says, following a pause. “Being in somebody else’s thing and saying their words and not having any right to change it – I don’t know how I’d deal with that. I’d like to think I could do it, but I just know I’ve got a dead particular taste. If somebody writes something and I’m gonna direct it, I’d like to be able to say ‘I’d like to change that, maybe try this’. And what if they say ‘no, no, no, stick with what I’ve written’, even if I know it doesn’t work. Then I’d look bad. With all these things, I know I’d like to just do what I f***king want.”

Nowhere is this sense of independence more evident than in Limmy's singularly entertaining Twitter account, peppered with random musings, long-form story-sessions, and regular features that poke through the blandness of celebrity Twitter with an irony so weaponised it approaches high art. Regular followers are familiar with his injunction to "check out Daft Punk's Get Lucky if you get the chance", a bland endorsement he's auto-tweeted once a week for the past four years.

There’s also his habit of commenting on any celebrity death with an identical account of having met said person “at a charity do once”, before adding “[T]hey were surprisingly down to earth, and VERY funny”. This last habit has seen him quoted by numerous respectable publications, convinced these unlikely remembrances are in earnest. I ponder if this would make actual celebs self-conscious around him. “Aye, actually. F**k, if I ever do go to a charity do all the celebs will be avoiding me. Trying to deliberately come across as not funny. Or really arrogant.

Arsonist

“But Twitter’s almost like being an arsonist in a way. When I was wee, in the middle of the summer, the big field behind the shops would be filled with dry grass and I’d get a box of matches. You chuck one match on that and the whole thing goes up in flames. Twitter’s a bit like that. You can just say one thing and it explodes from there.”

More recently, Limmy has taken to publishing with all the zeal of a middle-aged executive shoplifting a Kinder egg. Last year saw the publication of Daft Wee Stories, an impeccable collection of short fiction containing all the deft characterisation and lurching belly laughs common to his TV work. This year sees the release of its follow-up, That's Your Lot, for which he will also embark on a promotional tour across Ireland in June.

"It's a wee bit darker, less punchliney," he says. "In Daft Wee Stories, there might be stuff like The Size of Sally [featuring a woman who gradually peels off layers until she's so small she's barely perceptible to science], which ends with 'she was the size of your dad's cock'. In That's Your Lot, the stories are less about building to some final joke. It's more about building what's happening within each story than getting to a specific ending."

There are, of course, other benefits to publishing for a cult-but-not-cult favourite. “The good thing about books is they’re not as dependent as TV on budget or time slot; it’s not like there’s only certain hours a day people can read a book. As long as the publishers think the book will eventually sell enough copies, you have a chance.”

That's Your Lot by Limmy is published on May 4th. The book tour comes to Cork Opera House (June 1st), Black Box Theatre, Galway (June 2nd), Lime Tree Theatre, Limerick (June 3rd), Cat Laughs Comedy Festival, Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny (June 4th), and Vicar Street, Dublin (June 5th)