Gillian Reynolds

Radio comedy's constant innuendo makes me wince

I've been listening to Clue since it started, back in the Seventies. I have often wept with laughter at it but I think it reached a natural end when Humphrey Lyttelton died in 2008. Radio 4's then controller, Mark Damazer, thought otherwise and with reason. He noted how newer listeners to Radio 4 love it. New listeners, younger listeners are what every network controller wants. So it's probably irrelevant that, to me, Clue now sounds grubby, knowing, well-thumbed, heavy-handed. I hated Susan Calman on Monday singing Horny to the tune of Leaning on a Lampost. I winced at the lists of rude sweets. The studio audience loved it all. The very word "cock", even in blameless context, sent them into gales of laughter. Baffling.

There was a smart little sketch on The Now Show about NHS data, its sale and distribution, its users' choices. In a very few minutes it managed to be factual (the NHS intends to sell its clients' data, protected by pseudonymity but we can opt out) and entertaining (the ultimate deadline for opt outs is April so we'll probably put off doing anything for now). The joke was that however indignant we get about something the temptation to do nothing usually prevails. I laughed a lot. This is me to a T. I thereupon resolved that, when my leaflet advising me on the choice arrives, I will make a decision and act upon it at once.

Very last episode of the witty social satire, blessed by a superb cast (Ian McDiarmid, Mark Heap and Michael Feast), written and directed by Andrew McGibbon. McDiarmid plays the wily head of a school which has gone through many transformations and whose past pupils duly represent the fact, whether pillars of the establishment, captains of industry or various other grades of dodgy geezer. Now meet Faye (Elaine Cassidy) who will save its site from mercantile exploitation to transform it into a beacon of the new educational ethos.

Since 2005, darkly comic series The Pickerskill Reports has been an important part of Radio 4's schedule. Set just after the Second World War at Haunchurst College, an English public school, it follows the reminiscences of retired English teacher Dr Pickerskill (played by Ian McDiarmid). On Monday 27 May, the series comes to an end with Haunchurst facing the threat of a takeover by cult leader and former pupil Faye Hornette (played by Elaine Cassidy). Daily Telegraph radio critic Gillian Reynolds has praised the series, saying: "The Pickerskill Reports invites you into a very interesting, tightly controlled world. It's very subversive and anarchic but you never feel uncomfortable."

It's not real but it's very funny. This spoof phone-in is hosted by (fictional) Gary Bellamy, devised and produced by Charlie Higson and Paul Whitehouse who also appear, amid a glittering talent line-up which includes Amelia Bullmore, Felix Dexter and Adil Ray in the gloriously comic array of pretend callers. It's hard to go back to the real world of phone-ins after this, so perfectly does it capture their manic levels of non-communication.

The News Quiz (Radio 4, 6.30pm) returns. I know there are people who will leap with joy at this news. Once I would have been among them. No longer. Even though producer Sam Bryant has brought back journalists (tonight Daniel Finkelstein of The Times) to pit wits against comedians Roisin Conaty, Phill Jupitus and Jeremy Hardy, the programme has grown so much coarser with the years that even Sandi Toksvig seems challenged when trying to enliven the murky script.

Well, not entirely a complete history, but one that stretches from the Second World War to the early Sixties, as told by comedian David Mitchell and as captured, of course, by BBC radio. In wartime the variety theatres were, for a short time, closed and radio, from then on, became the nation's prime entertainment. Mitchell considers the birth of the catchphrase (some from Tommy Handley's ITMA are still uttered today) and how the Windmill Theatre, postwar, educated a new generation of comedians, including those who, in The Goon Show, changed radio comedy forever.

Comedian Bridget Christie noticed last year that misogyny was back. Then she realised it had never gone away, as her mother could have told her. But, the BBC is sensitive to such fluctuations in gender recognition so she now has a four-part series to elaborate on her theory. To start, she asks why feminism became a dirty word (I'd say around the time of the arrival of The Spice Girls) and whether the modern British woman needs it. Oh come on, Bridget. Just because you can get a mortgage doesn't mean a single women could 40 years ago.

John Lloyd marks the 30th anniversary of the book he co-wrote with the late Douglas Adams. It's a strange dictionary, as you'd expect from the inventor of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and his radio producer. In The Meaning of Liff you'll find definitions in a new dimension, as place names become definitions for experiences we recognise but don't really have a word for. It started as a game for Adams and Lloyd but Stephen Fry and Matt Lucas now tell Lloyd why they love it. Fellow devotee Professor Steven Pinker talks about the psychological relief and sense of bonding that comes from realising you're not alone in having the thoughts and feelings that Liff captures. And the studio audience throw in their own suggestions, too, to be judged, accepted or rejected by Lloyd and his distinguished judges Helen Fielding (creator of Bridget Jones), ex-Python (and Chaucer scholar) Terry Jones and actor/writer Sanjeev Bhaskar.

Alex Horne Presents the Horne Section is, at last, a genuinely fresh, funny, inventive show for this slot. Its base is music, it can be a bit rude but it has the pace and style to move along so briskly only vigilant prudes will find offence.