It’s Saturday night at the Grand Ole Opry and the bingo is getting tense.

Close to 100 Stetsons are bent low over tables and noisy punters at the saloon bar are being sternly shushed.

Above them, a Confederate flag hangs before a backdrop of rolling mountains, desert sand and a painted cactus.

It could be a scene out of an old John Wayne film - apart from the cans of Irn-Bru and thick Scottish accents.

“It’s the shoot-out next, after the band of course,” says 78-year-old Elsie, bingo card seller and guardian of the pens.

Beside her, club secretary Neil Warner carefully dunks a digestive biscuit into his mug of tea.

On previous nights, he’s been known to pull on a pair of chaps and fire blanks at his fellow gunslingers under the alias 'Pale Rider'.

Tonight, though, the west coast cowboy is happy to get on with the "bits and bobs" that keep Glasgow’s biggest country and western club ticking over.

For 35 years, the Opry on Govan Road has been the welcoming home of Glasgow's cowboys, a posse of country music fans raised on westerns and Johnny Cash.

With nicknames like Curly Bill, Belle Starr and Tequila Sheila, cowboys and cowgirls gathered to fire gunpowder blanks at balloons, dress up in their leathers and down root beer.

“My uncle William, aka ‘Santos’, was a gunslinger here in the 1970s,” says Neil. “His picture is actually on the wall upstairs.

“Everybody likes country and western – we were all brought up with it by our mothers and fathers.”

Run almost entirely by a team of volunteers, with decades spent raising funds for local children’s charities, the Opry is still packed to the gunnels on a Saturday night.

Over the course of the night there's a live music slot, a game of bingo, a charity sing-song, the raffle and a live DJ before the flag party appear for the American Trilogy, which includes a special flag folding ceremony complete with 21-gun salute in tribute to the war dead.

The Chuck Wagon snack bar also does a roaring trade with its £2 chips and cheese and you can feel the floor heave from the large crowd of line dancers keen to take advantage of the live band.

“It’s a bit of Nashville in Glasgow,” says Neil, over the warbling Texan sound of The Boot-Scootin' Boogie.

“I came for a night out once and just kept coming back. It was the friendly atmosphere that drew me in – that and its uniqueness. There’s nowhere else really like it."

Tonight, a wide cross-section of Glasgow society seems to have taken Neil up on his offer.

Fully dressed in tassels, neckerchiefs and spurs, one gentleman even has a raccoon tail gently swinging from his straw Stetson.

At one table, teenagers with blue mohawks and piercings scrutinise their bingo cards while, behind them, identical twins Anne and Maureen Cuddihy are lining up their drinks.

"I was 21 when I first came here and it was brilliant,” says Maureen, now 59, resplendent in a gold shimmering blouse and camel coat.

"The queue to get in was right out the door. There used to be an American military base down the road and all the lads would be in dancing. They used to bring us in these big T-bone steaks, it was lovely.

"Back then, we used to dance the Alley Cat and the Slosh. The only thing was you had to watch your feet because they wore these massive boots."

When the line dancing was over there was always a mix of other interesting acts and folk to take over.

Formerly a post office, then mortuary, then cinema and even Irish dancing club – the Opry has also been used for filming Taggart and for hosting Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds.

It has also been host to Lloyd Cole, Franz Ferdinand, Celtic Connections and the Americana Festival of Music.

"All sorts take place here," says Neil. "We've had a breakdancing night. We've had the Glasgow Film Festival showing Thelma and Louise. It’s got a great history and a lot of stories."

This year, the Opry will continue to entertain each Saturday night and are in the process of recruiting more Scots cowboys into their ranks.

"My cowboy name is Chancer. I don’t know how ... well I do know how I got the name but I'm not sharing that one," says former cowboy recruit John Aps.

"This is the jewel in Glasgow’s crown. Unless you come in and see what goes in you won’t believe it."

"That’s pretty much the long and the short of it," adds Neil.

"If you want to change who you are for one night, you can just walk through that door and become a cowboy."

Download: The STV News app is Scotland's favourite and is available for iPhone from the App store and for Android from Google Play. Download it today and continue to enjoy STV News wherever you are.