Gordon Kennedy

First episode of a terrific comedy series starring Jack Docherty, Gordon Kennedy, Rebecca Front and David Haig. Andrew Merrin, visiting professor of anthropology at the University of the West of Scotland (formerly Partick Polytechnic) is embarking on a project to introduce to the modern world two Jacobite soldiers - Macdonald, the chief of the clan, and Rab, his bard - who have been holed up in a Perthshire cave since the mid 18th century.

First lesson: what is patriotism? The search for an answer involves a trip to an Edinburgh souvenir shop and a pep talk on football from Tess McNair from Radio Peebles, followed by a real match: Scotland v the Dickson Isles (like the Faroes but smaller) in a World Cup qualifier - a comic tour de force that had me howling with laughter.

Two Jacobite soldiers from 1745, a clan chief and his bard, have been found alive and well in a cave. A visiting English academic (of no great status but hopes of it) leaps at the chance to integrate them into modern Scottish society. Carl Gorham (of Stressed Eric cultish fame) is the author and this is very funny, especially if you (as I do) like Scotsmen plus a bustling conjunction of the real with the surreal. There's a marvellous cast too, David Haig, Gordon Kennedy (who also directs), Jack Docherty, Moray Hunter, Morwenna Banks and Rebecca Front.

When this comedy series dropped into the schedules last year I listened and I did not get it. This was my radio equivalent of Miranda over on BBC2 (which has still to make my mouth vaguely twitch, let alone invoke laughter). But the fact that it reunited Gordon Kennedy and Jack Doherty from Absolutely made me stick with it and my steadfastness was rewarded by the comedy fairy. Or, rather, the comedy warlock. Mordrin McDonald is to wizardry what Rab C Nesbitt was to elocution: he is a procrastinating, lethargic waste of space who expects the worst from the world and is never disappointed. This opener to the new series sees him forced, once more, into a heroic act and the dry one-liners are first-rate. Maybe it's time for me to give Miranda another try?

There's no holding Stanley Baxter, now in his mid-eighties and apparently becoming as indestructible as Macbeth claimed to be in Shakespeare's play. A new series of The Stanley Baxter Playhouse starts with a comedy written by Scottish playwright Rona Munro which retells the saga from the viewpoint of the clownish Porter. Gordon Kennedy plays Macbeth and Siobhan Redmond as Lady Macbeth consolidates her CV of wicked females, while Baxter himself takes the Porter's role, assuring us that he had great plans for his master, before everything went pear-shaped.

Political and polemical do not always a great comedian make, but Jeremy Hardy keeps his revolutionary fist in an amusingly silky glove for Radio 4. This series of comic lectures - in which he is joined for mock interviews by guests such as Alison Steadman, Rebecca Front and, as is the case here, Gordon Kennedy - started back in 1993. Subjects covered down the years have helped the nation grow to the fulsome state of cultural, intellectual and spiritual awareness that we are blessed with today. None of this would have happened if Jeremy Hardy had not lectured us upon How to Argue Your Position, How to Improve Your Mind and the seminal How to Have Sex. Why was this man not in the Queen's Birthday Honours? Oh, yes. He's a socialist.

Mordrin McDonald: 21st-Century Wizard (Radio 4, Wednesdays) is proof that, somewhere beyond the usual shouting and swearing, real comedy still exists. It's written by David Kay and Gavin Smith, stars Gordon Kennedy (as Mordrin) and Jack Docherty (as fellow wizard Bernard the Blue) and concerns a 2,000-year-old being who fights evil whenever he isn't jam-making or chatting to the neighbours. He is a Scot and lives in Scotland which imbues in him a world view like those of the great Chic Murray or the marvellous Arnold Brown, tending to the school of rueful reflection and deflation of expectation. Asked if wizards can sense each others' presence he replies, "No, I just look out the window." He knows how to disarm a dragon and what to do when the binmen don't arrive. Every urban village needs a Mordrin. I hope this one stays longer on Radio 4 than his four allotted episodes. His chances of doing so are enhanced by good casting and strong production (by Gus Beattie, for independents The Comedy Unit).

I was understimulated by the first mention of Mordrin McDonald: 21st Century Wizard. Joanne Rowling's ubiquity has been in danger of buggering up wizards: you find yourself in danger of echoing that don in the Eagle and Child who greeted another self-congratulatory reading session between CS Lewis and JRR Tolkein with the necessary phrase: "Not more fucking elves."

But this was good. Funny good, pithy good. Mordrin is a laconic, lazy, pissed-off Scottish wizard, doomed to attempt, with vitriolic reluctance, heroic tasks in an unheroic world. No missing back-story here on, for instance, Mordrin's name: his grandfather was bored during Countdown a thousand years ago: yes, that's the kind of throwaway line I enjoy, and this is full of them, and it also reunites Jack Docherty and Gordon Kennedy from TV's sorely missed Absolutely, which is a humungous golden spitting dragon of a good idea.

Sorcerers, wizards and witches live among us, says the narrator, guarding us against all manner of evil, protecting the planet. This is about 2,000-year-old Mordrin, a laconically philosophical wizard coming to grips with trite human challenges and getting on with his jam-making. He's rather wonderful. Written by David Kay and Gavin Smith, starring Gordon Kennedy.

Panel of Experts: Still absolutely inspired

Five members of the 1990s sketch show Absolutely - Gordon Kennedy, Pete Baikie, Jack Docherty, Moray Hunter and John Sparkes - look back at their old selves in their second series