Gillian Reynolds

Hurray! I've really gone off The News Quiz (too blue for me and too self-satisfied for its own good) so welcome back Steve Punt, Hugh Dennis, Mitch Benn, Jon Holmes and Laura Shavin with their much wittier reflection of the week. There have been Friday nights in past series where I could have hugged them for being so astute and so funny about government goings on. Even with Cameron and Clegg and their coalition comrades being much harder to mimic than Brown and Blair, Darling, Prescott et al, I'm still confident my thoughts will be echoed in the team's jokes.

Four further adventures of nice Nick (Paul Bazely), who inherited a house only to find it occupied by charming but dodgy Hazelbeach (Jamie Foreman). Since then, in this lively comedy by Caroline and David Stafford, they've managed to live under the same roof. But the first of their latest series starts with lightning striking that very roof, water pouring in and the dreaded James, Nick's girlfriend's former husband, sneaking in too. You don't have to believe that every atom of the story could be true. But Nick's misadventures with roof men sound only too familiar.

This is no ordinary sitcom. Laurence Howarth's likeable hero is Simon (played by Darren Boyd) an arms dealer. He's a nice man who always tries to see the other side of any argument and whom luck, or perhaps even a higher power, preserves. A big American arms firm, the best in the world, the most ubiquitous, the McDonald's of munitions, enters the takeover market. So he puts in for redundancy from his own employer, expecting a payout, longing for the day when he can give it all up and write music. Fate, however, has other plans. First of four episodes.

While I was away I discovered a gem. Craig Brown's Lost Diaries (Radio 4, Monday mornings). This is so funny you will snort, hoot, chortle and guffaw loudly enough to dismay the neighbours. Hearing Gyles Brandreth, Esther Rantzen, Paddy Ashdown, Heather Mills, David Blunkett, Barbara Cartland, Andy Warhol and Prince Charles all reading from their personal journals is a fantasy, of course, but a glorious one. The cast is superb, the scripts are diamond bright. Why haven't I heard it before? Because on Monday mornings I am usually writing this. And glad to do so, even in a week when the tremors of history shook the BBC's foundations.

The Jason Byrne Show (R2, 10.00pm) returns for a third series of energetic stand-up, sketches and audience participation with an episode themed around relationships. Byrne, who is a talented Irish comedian, asks whether married audience members would equate their partnership to Halley's Comet or a pair of parallel trains, and wonders about the etiquette of proposing in a pub.

Stephen Fry, the nation's favourite polymath, reads an abridgement of the latest volume of his autobiography as this week's featured book. It picks up the story from his previous memoir Moab Is My Washpot, which is to say: out of prison and heading for Cambridge University. It's beautifully written and read (Fry is a old pro in the audiobook world), shamelessly full of famous names, and a moving reminder of how university can turn things around for some people. But then, given the level of BBC publicity Fry attracts, you probably knew all of this already.

Ed Reardon - author, pipe smoker, consummate fare-dodger and master of the abusive email, as he likes to be known - is one of the best and most original comic figures to appear on radio this last five years. Recorded in front of an eager crowd at this year's Edinburgh Fringe, this live performance features Ed - played by Christopher Douglas - reading extracts from his oeuvre, including Jane Seymour's Household Hints (ghost-written) and an episode of Tenko. While not as unremittingly funny as an episode of Ed Reardon's Week, it's still worth catching.

Richard Herring's latest series is based on the idea that he will try to rehabilitate some apparently harmless object that people now object to. He begins with Hitler's moustache. Why should that little piece of facial hair still provoke such hatred? He discovers (from a German moustache historian, yes, really) that Hitler grew a beard in the Second World War then shaved it down. During his rise to power, that moustache became very popular. After the war, not at all. So Herring grows a beard then shaves it down Hitler-fashion to test reaction today.

Don't let the title put you off. Shai Hussain's play is comic, scary, frank. It's about Meena, a lapsed Muslim, nearly 30 and not yet married. She drinks, she DJs, she's the despair of her mother and her younger, about-to-be-married sister. Then she meets Sarwar, a handsome, charming, intelligent chef. They're attracted, get engaged. She's been honest with him but he hasn't told her much in return. He dodges every personal question, doesn't have a visa or even a Facebook profile. What's he hiding? Stay to the end. It's surprising.

You never know, it might get witty this time. The venerable topical comment panel show returns for another season. Sandi Toksvig chairs, Jeremy Hardy, Sue Perkins and brilliant Andy Hamilton are among the guests. But is the nation in the mood for comedians taking pot shots? I doubt it. These are hard times and likely to get harder. That's why the gloriously spiky surrealism of Jon Holmes's Listen Against in this slot on Tuesdays is such a tonic. If News Quiz wants to be more than a habit it had better shape up. Radio 4's new Controller is listening.