Jane Anderson (II)

Watching television that makes you cringe can be inspirational - if you work as a comedian that is. Kevin Bishop was sat at home one weekend and caught Noel's HQ on Sky1.

This series was full of stories about people who'd been ripped off or mutilated or were desperately ill. Edmonds and the team would sort their lives out and, in publicising the show, noble Noel called upon the public to take matters into their own hands and help fix broken Britain.

Bishop felt a stirring in his funny bones. What if he were to meld Mr Edmonds with another TV host who was there to right the wrongs of "ordinary people" - by which, of course, he meant Jeremy Kyle. Working with comedy producer extraordinaire Bill Dare - the man behind such successes as Dead Ringers, The Now Show and Spitting Image - they created Les Kelly.

"He's a complete idiot," explains Bishop of his creation. "He's very right-wing, has lived an entirely sheltered lifestyle and he really wants to put right everything that he sees as being wrong in Britain."

The result is this superbly observed comedy, driven by strong character performances, at the centre of which is the utterly flawed Les Kelly. To say there is something of Alan Partridge about Les is a heartfelt compliment.

This series deserves to be huge. Don't miss it.

Radio Times review

Comedian and writer Richard Herring is no stranger to controversy himself and thus makes the perfect host for a series that tries to turn popular opinion about unpopular objects or people upon its head. "I'm going to turn the taboo into the to-do," he quips in his introduction before informing us that the item he is considering as having been on the end of an unfair press is the golliwog.

In a vox pop among Londoners - black as well as white - the overwhelming response to the golly is that it was a harmless toy, a symbol of its time that would not have a place today but was never an embodiment of racial hatred. Herring very cleverly introduces some marvellous examples of why this is not the case, the most appalling being a short story by Enid Blyton in which her choice of names for three gollies is too offensive to print. There's no preaching, just intelligent and extremely funny assessment, ably assisted by black comedienne Ava Vidal who pulls no punches in her views on this sorry doll. It's time to consign the golly to a museum.

The most loquacious comedy on the airwaves comes to a close this week as the verbose partners from hell fall out over celery, Androcles and the lion and the use of parentheses on notes stuck to the fridge door. Frank Skinner's writing has been a revelation.

The overall impression is shambolic, but don't let that fool you: the moments of silence, lapses in concentration and misplaced judgements of taste are cleverly scripted comedic tools that give this highly professional duo - Diane Morgan and Joe Wilkinson - the air of amateurs. Bored, fed-up and rather grumpy amateurs at that.

Once more, the sketches where they pretend to be animals are the funniest but there are also glimpses of surreal genius - blowing the programme budget on an ice sculpture of Tim Henman, for example - that make this worth a try.

Rory Bremner is back doing what he does best: responding to the news with his sharpest set of satirical teeth firmly attached.

The show is recorded the night before broadcast, so there is no way of predicting what or who the subject matter might be, but he has promised to stick to his mantra that "it's as important to make sense out of things as it is to make fun of them".

To this end, he is including incisive interviews alongside his political swipes and promises a special guest each week.

Ken Bruce is the overlord of Radio 2 and he's been running a tight ship. So, when young comedians Diane Morgan and Joe Wilkinson asked his permission to broadcast their sketch series he laid down some strict conditions. Hear the wrath of Bruce here as the duo fail to provide him with the introductory theme tune he's demanded. Around this frankly strange set-up, comes a string of equally surreal sketches, the best of which involves two spiders discussing what it's like to be caught under a glass.

Professor of Ignorance and owner of The Museum of Curiosity John Lloyd (perhaps better known as the producer of Blackadder and QI) returns with a new curator, Dave Gorman, to help extract descriptions of bequests from prospective benefactors. This episode's objects are donated by atheist theologian Francesca Stavrakopoulou, mathematician Alex Bellos and comedian Jimmy Carr. These highly intelligent guests are happy to sink to unimaginable depths of taste in both their conversation and their choices, but it makes for truly wicked comedy - especially when one guest bequeaths God!

BBC producers are a wily bunch. When Eartha Kitt was at the height of her international career it would have been impossible to persuade her to show up at an old music hall theatre in Leeds for a one-song appearance. But Barney Colehan, producer of BBC TV's The Good Old Days for all of its 30-year history, pulled off this coup by telling her that he had arranged for her to use the dressing room that Charlie Chaplin had occupied at the start of his career.

The fact that there was no way of knowing which of the many dressing rooms Chaplin might have used has programme host Paul Merton howling with laughter, one of many occasions when he cracks up over the course of his look at the history of the City Varieties Music Hall in Leeds. It's Britain's oldest music hall and has just reopened after a major refurbishment.

Merton is joined in this celebration of variety shows by Barry Cryer, Roy Hudd and Ken Dodd. The latter was the headline act at the gala reopening of the Varieties on 18 September 2011. Mr Cryer, on the other hand, recalls his first appearance at the venue in the 1950s, when music hall was out of favour and he shared the stage with ladies performing acts entitled "Fun and Dames" and "See the Nipples and Die!" There's no such roll call these days and, with the success of Britain's Got Talent, Merton hopes for a resurgence of variety shows.

The most appealing of controller Gwyneth Williams's schedule changes to R4 is turning this slot into a place for top-notch comedy series. Sue Perkins and Rory Bremner will be arriving soon but the run begins with a sketch show from the creator of Cabin Pressure, John Finnemore. The gags are predominantly observations on the vagaries of the English language and clever pokes at our obsession with nostalgia. Not a word is wasted - this is a chill-out zone for smart people.

After a shaky start, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders have found their radio feet and now provide a top quality show. There's less emphasis on their old records and more freedom to get on with what they do best - bounce off one another to the point of gentle anarchy.

Their most successful feature has been talking with their own mothers on air - there was no doubting where those comedy genes came from - and the familial baton is picked up today by guest Matt Lucas with his mum.