Elisabeth Mahoney

Listen carefully to Tina C Goes Down Under: The Aborogynal Monologues and almost every line crosses one boundary of good taste or another. But Tina C's delivery is so sugary and breathy that it's easy to miss some of the acidic asides.

What you can't miss is her mispronunciation of key terms on this tour of Australia. Aboriginal becomes aborogynal, and indigenous is indigynous. This gag, where the emphasis settles on 'gyn' in both words (pronounced as in 'vagina'), was repeated relentlessly in last night's programme. I was just losing patience with it when Tina's Australian press manager tried to correct her. It was a funny scene, revolving around Tina's clearly ferociously angry face, and her venomous dismissal of the point. Anything else that Australasians are touchy and weird about? she spat. Maybe because of repressed guilt?

Elsewhere Tina (aka Chris Green) left very little free of insult. This being Australia, some local 'enduring symbols' came in for her treatment. We heard about the Sydney Oprey House, and how, when faced with a spider, she decided to fight it. [/q]I'm going to wrestle that spider,[/q] she drawled, and I'm going to do it for Steve Irwin. And his daughter Bimbo.

Ed Reardon's Week returned yesterday, and was as brilliantly bitter as ever. Surprisingly, Reardon was in a relationship (for a record-breaking second month). But you knew it would never work, and Reardon was soon snarling about his girlfriend's habit of turning the toaster down from a virile and life-affirming five to a pallid two. When they split up, he was left with mixed feelings, not unlike those experienced on reading that a puppet theatre has had its arts council grant cut.

His cat Elgar went missing, and Reardon penned a four-page note to pin on lampposts. One of the running gags is that Reardon never writes to the required length, and this cropped up again with his work on cut-down versions of modern classics. He'd reduced a Nick Hornby novel to half a page, explaining that when you remove the self-regarding offal about what trousers he wore in the 1970s there's not much left. By the end of the episode, things were back to normal: the girlfriend had gone, the toaster was at five, and he was reunited with Elgar, playing a game of TV licence final-reminder football with him, and railing against the idiocy of the modern world.

I've Never Seen Star Wars is a great idea: getting people to try out new things on air. As presenter Marcus Brigstocke explained, this might be because you haven't wanted to do something before (get a tattoo, eat in a Harvester restaurant) or have been too scared (to go through US customs and immigration with a beard).

It is very funny indeed. Last night, Phill Jupitus tried a Findus Crispy Pancake (one of the words isn't true, he quipped), foie gras, and pigs' trotters. The latter wasn't much of a revelation (as you might expect, Marcus, they taste of pork), but an impromptu combination of pancake and foie gras proved more exciting. It's like class war in my mouth, he said.

He also tried colonic irrigation, and the recording of that was one of the funniest bits of radio this year. The therapist explained the process in a deadpan manner that was quite majestic, especially when she let her 'tubing clamps' make their worrying sound effect. Jupitus fretted that she'd find some hidden G-spot of delight and that he'd become sexually addicted to having my arse pumped out. Rather worryingly, then, he has already booked his next appointment.

You spot the gag pretty quickly in Strangers On Trains (Radio 4), a new spoof in which presenter Nat Segnit shares the apparent results of a year spent recording conversations with men on trains. It's all entirely made up, but for the first few seconds, it feels real enough.

We have a middle-class, self-regarding presenter in Segnit, and he does dishevelled posh well, sounding like Jeremy Paxman crossed with Boris Johnson. Arh, he barked, I'm travelling around on trains all over the country, talking to strangers essentially. That 'essentially' was marvellously done.

In the next sentence, the spoof was revealed. From then, this became a patchy comedy, with some glistening moments - such as a Welsh postman who gets rather carried away with his community role - and some dull interludes, even in its brief 15-minute format.

Best of all was Segnit's narration, saying nothing much in pompous, ridiculous soundbites. There's something in particular about men on trains, he opined. Perhaps it's that sensation we get, staring out of the window. There is a wicked, funny spoof of radio features to be made. This wasn't it, but bits of this were horribly, brilliantly familiar to anyone who listens to a lot of Radio 4.

Laura Solon: Talking and Not Talking returned for a second series yesterday, and her writing and performance really does suit the medium. On radio, Solon necessarily concentrates most on voice and gently ticklish scenarios, told by characters who are often silly, but at least faintly recognisable too.

I liked the short sketches best, with their glimpses into peculiar corners of lives and minds. A mother explained that she and her partner were bringing their children up bilingually to give them a head start in life. Unfortunately, she added, neither of these languages are English, so we have no idea what they're saying. A hairdresser trilled on predictably about her job, and how she is like a counsellor to her customers. Then she said, quietly, oddly: And you have the added bonus of being able to keep your client's hair.

The Casebook of Inspector Steine, penned and undoubtedly immaculately punctuated by Lynne Truss, oozes period atmosphere. Like everything in this classy comedy-drama, the atmospherics are done mostly for laughs - and so the sound effects are ticklishly overdone - but also to convey 1950s Brighton in its raffish glory.

Truss draws a world whose first aim is to make you smile, but it's a dramatic world you can lose yourself in.

At the heart of Truss's drama are the likable staples of a hapless, high-ranked detective, in Steine, and the rich seam that is surface appearance versus a grimy underbelly. Nothing, apart from Steine's worryingly detached air - I hope you remembered the humbugs, Brunswick is about as focused as he gets - is what it seems. For six months, Brighton is crime-free, and the local constabulary is delighted rather than puzzled. Steine works on his golf handicap, while a constable knocks out a ground-breaking sociological study of kinship patterns in the Fens.

The offerings in Radio 4's 11.30am slot are patchy. Potting On, for example, the garden-centre comedy starring Pam Ayres, makes you want to lose your radio. For ever.

Buy Me Up TV, a new sitcom starring and co-written by Justin Edwards, faces a real comedic hurdle. The world it portrays, in this work-based comedy, is that of the cheaper end of the shopping channels. The problem is, those channels are funny enough: crass and camp, and full of phrases you can't quite believe you just heard.

When this sitcom focuses on the selling, it does match the real thing for laughs. There's the ludicrousness of the products - a chicken de-boner which 'uses centrifuge'; a knife reputed to be 'so powerful it can turn into a fine mist', and 'Robert Mugabe beach towels' - and the sales team's banal, empty phrases (they are quite literally amazing). Off camera, though, it's a patchier affair, in places somewhat hysterical - as opposed to hysterically funny - and all a bit overexcited. There are nods to Larry Sanders, hints of Alan Partridge and faint echoes of Curb Your Enthusiasm. These are not bad precedents, but what this lively new sitcom needs to sell is an identity all of its own.

Mastering the Universe must have looked very funny on paper. When I look back at the lines I noted while listening, they're really quite ticklish. Dawn French playing Professor Joy Klamp, reader in Passive Aggression at Sussex University, describes "sorry", when delivered grudgingly, as "the most exciting, mysterious, liberating, non-apologetic word in the dictionary". She then extols "the fulfilling empowerment of sulking, and mooching, and staring into the middle distance and making little ticklish noises when anyone says something funny".

But it didn't make me laugh. Dawn French did the same act as ever, and in a restless, unsatisfying performance made it clear how much her comedy relies on facial expressions. The script was also overwritten and featured too many lame sketches. It's a pity because the concept behind the show is indeed funny, yet listening was a reminder that unsuccessful comedy is one of the grimmest things. Even the majestic Brian Perkins, delivering the opening and closing lines, couldn't make this the stuff of chuckles.

Duff gags, convoluted silliness and double entendres so bad they make you squeak: yes, Another Case of Milton Jones is back. And those are some of its best bits.

This is how bad the so bad-it's-good vibe is. In the midst of a ludicrous scene set in France, Jones meets up with his chum Anton. 'I thought we arranged to meet at the boulangerie,' says Anton. 'Ah,' replies Jones, in a moment of realisation. 'Not playing boules in our lingerie.'

Somehow this is all quite addictive. Occasionally, the jokes aren't quite preposterously weak enough, and then they are dull, but who cares when they are redeemed by Jones's one-liners at their kooky, goofy finest ('I was working on plans for a psychiatric hospital in Brazil in the shape of a giant nut').

Recalling a time when he ran a chocolate shop, Jones remembered serving George Michael, who wanted a Wispa - cue a clip of Michael singing 'whisper' - and then he slipped on it. Cue, you've guessed it, him singing 'a careless whisper'.