Andrew Nickolds

Now starting his seventh series, Ed Reardon is attaining the kind of popularity that makes those of us who discovered him early feel possessive. Andrew Nickolds and Christopher Douglas's creation gets endless trails, repeated by presenters with a chuckle in their voices. The first episode of Ed Reardon's Week was a classic, pitting the freelance hack yet again against the forces of useless youth. Starving and forced to forage for blackberries, Ed gets a break when he is commissioned to help out Ben Herbert, young author of the "Dude, Where My Career?" column in The Observer. How did he get that? Ed inquires. "I was spending the weekend with my uncle and he was like, 'I've got this Sunday newspaper that needs filling every week'." "Ah!" says Ed bitterly, "The plot thins." Drafted in to help write "How to Survive with Like No Cash", Ed suggests hiding in the luggage space on National Express, stealing flowers from cemeteries and recycling Christmas cards. Fortunately, the lucrative venture falls through when Ben is talent spotted by Downing Street and promoted to Graduate Employment Tsar, leaving Ed just as starving and bitter as before.

The success of Ed Reardon the series is in inverse proportion to Ed Reardon the character. He is now critic-proof, which is great but a fresh danger awaits. Just like all those Archers photographs, which totally ruined everyone's love of the characters, so visualising Ed Reardon in any way would be disastrous. While I can hear him cursing me even now, can I just say please BBC, don't ever commission Ed Reardon the TV series.

Embracing ageing with open arms, the crustiest antediluvian on radio was back in the form of Ed Reardon, performing "With Great Pleasure without the pleasure" in a stage version of his own works. Written by Andrew Nickolds and Christopher Douglas, An Audience With Ed Reardon was a savage hymn to the horror of freelance life, complete with rejection slips, ("Dear Mr Reardon, how did you get this address?") and excerpts from his afternoon play, A Bargeful of Blood, described by one reviewer as "the most harrowing afternoon's ironing I've ever had". Failure is a theme that English writers have always done well - think of Dickens - and Reardon encapsulates brilliantly the plight of an ageing hack beset by new technology, patronising publishers and "12-year-old commissioning editors". You wonder what will happen when Ed encounters a BBC Media Literacy Ambassador, but somehow you can already imagine.

Dave Podmore on the Stump (Radio 4, Wednesday) was a glorious post-election tonic. Not all cricket fans love Podmore, sublime comic creation of Christopher Douglas and Andrew Nickolds with assistance here from Nick Newman. He is, for some, too louche, too coarse. Only as louche and coarse, of course, as some former county players who turn up in reality shows and commentary boxes. This was the story of how, by Podmore-ish accident, he became an MP, observed and assisted as always by the faithful Andy, reporter for fictional but recognisable Radio One County. Pod had to stand down, of course, but not before enough jokes to make the script fizz and me fall off the chair laughing. On this show (produced by independents Hat Trick) even (the real) Jeremy Paxman sounded as if he were, at last, enjoying himself.

England's laziest and most offensive cricketer has, since his last special on Radio 4, fallen upon even harder times. Tipped off that there was still money to be made as an MP he had no choice but to stand as an independent candidate at the recent election with the winning slogan of "Leave me alone and I'll leave you alone". Writers Christopher Douglas, Nick Newman and Andrew Nickolds are on fire again and Pod fans need not worry - his election success is quickly spoiled by scandal.

An election special or, rather, a post-election tonic. Dave Podmore, once a pretty middling kind of cricketer, latterly the sort of lowest league celeb who promotes office stationery or turns up on TV reality shows, has been elected MP for the marginal seat of Leicester Forest Services (East). Has he been the beneficiary of the Undecided vote? Or was he just too drunk to remember what happened at the count? (And did his distant cousin Ed Reardon campaign for him?) Written by and starring Christopher Douglas, Andrew Nickolds and Nick Newman.

Radio: Ed Reardon's Week

It is one of life's great imponderables that the misadventures of Christopher Douglas and Andrew Nickolds's indomitable failure are broadcast at a time when few but Ed himself are likely to be listening. Particularly as this latest - the sixth, can it be so long? - series has been of a standard as high as any.

"I have no intention of resuming the life of unmitigated misery, disappointment, abuse and sheer grinding poverty that my so-called career as a writer had become," rails Ed Reardon, the nation's favourite author. His dippy agent Ping has tracked Ed (the comic creation of Christopher Douglas and Andrew Nickolds) to the sheltered housing that he's retired to, prematurely. Of course, he does return to the life of unmitigated misery as a writer and along the way come killer lines, primarily from Ed. Here, for example, is his take on Paris Hilton: "I'm well aware who she is. I've written in the voice of her chihuahas - both of them, two entirely different characters I might add." Ah, Ed is back, and this time he smells of carbolic, as well as bitter disappointment.

The bucolic writer returns in a masterpiece of comedic melancholy by Chris Douglas (who also plays Ed) and Andrew Nickolds. Together with Count Arthur Strong, Ed Reardon is one of Radio 4's finest comedy characters.

Dave Podmore is a fictional former cricketer who scrapes a shameless living in the scrubland between sport and showbiz. There are serious cricket scribes who don't find him funny. I simply adore him. The creation of Christopher Douglas and Andrew Nickolds (who also gave birth to that peerless paradigm of the modern man of letters, Ed Reardon), his adventures mirror life closely enough for laughter, sharply enough to register. Here's how he narrowly missed out to real life former cricketer Phil Tufnell in getting onto Strictly Come Dancing.

Three cheers for cricket's best team, Christopher Douglas and Andrew Nickolds, with an eve of Ashes adventure of their superb creation Dave Podmore, once an England player, later entrepreneur and after-dinner speaker now a corner shop owner, plus dogged companion Andy Hamer. This made me laugh so often and explosively while I was listening to the preview disc that a neighbour looked in to see if I was OK. It isn't just cricket that comes under their fiendishly funny scrutiny. Radio, TV, social fads and fading commentators are all there too.