Jack Docherty

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?

I see that Channel 4 have posted large amounts of their archive on YouTube, including this one treasure that had a considerable effect on me, Mr Don and Mr George. It was a spin-off series from the sketch show Absolutely, and starred Moray Hunter and Jack Docherty, who also both wrote it.

The show was transmitted in 1993, when I was about 18 (and a serious comedy geek). I totally loved it and the show demonstrated to me what was possible comedically in the modern era. Pythons, Goons and Goodies are all great, but they were all some time ago (even in 1993). I wanted something that was positive, genial, silly and knock-about. And I found it in Mr Don and Mr George. Lots of wordplay, daft, self-defeating conversations and surreal turns. The plots made sense, but it wasn't about the story - much more about the gags. Perhaps this was the problem with the show (though not for me) and why it never quite got a big enough audience. That said, I seem to remember it was scheduled for Friday night at 10.35pm - and this sort of comedy never really seemed suited to the slot (althoughPaul Merton had had some success in that slot a few years earlier). It's worth noting that Mr D & Mr G, this much forgotten jewel, was broadcast two or three years before Father Ted and, I believe, paved the way. I'd be interested to hear the views of others on this subject.

I taped the episodes off the TV onto a VHS back in 1993, and then a few years ago scrubbed them by mistake. The realisation I'd lost them was awful at the time, as I was pretty sure they wouldn't be re-released on DVD. And they haven't been. But they are on YouTube. Joy of joys.

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.

Coach Blackley fixes the players of Ashburn United with a stare so fierce it might make Sir Alex Ferguson quiver. If you lose today, he rants, you will spend the rest of your lives in shame! But the squad cowering in the changing room are small children, competing in the North and Midlands Under 11 Cup. Their insanely competitive parents are even worse, trying to relive their lives through their offspring, and carrying it to an obsessive extreme.

Written by the Absolutely veterans Moray Hunter and Jack Docherty, the humour in this mockumentary is often desperate and is based on a Canadian show about a junior ice hockey team, which suggests that these desperate impulses may be hard-wired into the human brain.

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