Jane Anderson (I)

"There's no much opportunity for self-advancement in toilets," says Jim Bloggs, as he takes a break from swabbing the public conveniences clean. If only he'd got some 'levels' at school. Who knows? He could have become a Bachelor of Arts, but then he's married, to Hilda, so it's probably too late for that as well.

Originally published as a graphic novel in 1980, Raymond Briggs has brought his work up to date (in terms of GCSEs and the cost of living) and turned it into a magical piece of radio drama.

Jim and his wife are a poor working-class couple who long for a better, albeit a fantasy, lifestyle, where she can dress as a bar floozie in fishnet tights and he can be a swaggering cowboy.

Briggs shows the stifling effect that a lack of education and wealth has upon their dreams without needing to hit the listener round the head with a copy of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels's Communist Manifesto.

At every plot juncture in the play Jim's childlike naivety is crushed closer to despair by his encounter with faceless, uninterested and even cruel bureaucracy. The final run-in with authority has him sentences to an indefinite stay in prison for the various crimes that he's been charged with, including wearing obscene and indecent apparel in a public place and fouling the pedestrian footways - he took an elderly donkey out, while dressed as a highway man in second-hand rubber waders and his mother-in-law's frilly shirt.

This is utterly faithful to Briggs's original story, with some striking sound effects when Jim and Hilda indulge in their fantasies. It's warm, it's funny, but it also hurts.

Cornish magic is at work in this surreal modern comedy, inspired by the ancient saints who, it is said, landed in the county from Brittany and France hundreds of years ago. Mary Kneebone, the local baker in a small Cornish harbour, has not been happy of late. Her wretched husband turned out to be a bigamist and her beloved father has died, leaving her to run the business on her own. But when, one dark and stormy night (of course!), she rescues a solitary Irish sailor with a beard down to his knees and limpets attached to his back, she feels a burning pain of love and happiness shoot across her chest. Her misery begins to turn to joy. And Mary is not the only sad soul in the village to find a cure through this strangest of healers. The weird one's clientele grows ever larger, unfettered by his alcohol addiction and the suggestion that he might have murdered his father. A generous and uplifting take on our folkloric storytelling traditions.

You may not have heard of Sarah Millican yet - but you will. She's fast, frank and very, very funny. Already a name on the live comedy circuit, this series - her first on radio - sets her up as a modern-day agony aunt in a studio, "counselling" her audience. It rather reminded me of Mrs Merton at times, but that's no bad thing. The scripted "problems" are tightly written with jokes fired at high velocity, but it's her instant responses to members of the audience who dare to pipe up that prove her worth as a razor-sharp-witted woman.

When the Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand "Sachsgate" mini-drama fizzled away, the world in which I work was changed for ever by the c-word - compliance. I can no longer listen to programmes for reviewing purposes without them having been signed off by multiple layers of managers, especially and primarily at Radio 2. So I have not been able to enjoy the first of the returning series of one of my favourite radio comedies. I hope and imagine that this tale of a 38-year-old gamer, entirely at the mercy of his ruthless mother, will be as funny as the past two series. But whatever the content, we can, at least, be assured that it's ticked all the correct boxes.

"I have no intention of resuming the life of unmitigated misery, disappointment, abuse and sheer grinding poverty that my so-called career as a writer had become," rails Ed Reardon, the nation's favourite author. His dippy agent Ping has tracked Ed (the comic creation of Christopher Douglas and Andrew Nickolds) to the sheltered housing that he's retired to, prematurely. Of course, he does return to the life of unmitigated misery as a writer and along the way come killer lines, primarily from Ed. Here, for example, is his take on Paris Hilton: "I'm well aware who she is. I've written in the voice of her chihuahas - both of them, two entirely different characters I might add." Ah, Ed is back, and this time he smells of carbolic, as well as bitter disappointment.

Constrain your sides with the sturdiest of materials: Tim Key's monologue of a trampled-upon loser is the funniest thing on radio this fortnight, all bar none. And, for once, there's a happy ending.

I have no fear of recommending something that I've not heard: it's Dave Podmore on Strictly. He'll be awful, unspeakably rude and embarrassing to behold. But there is such sweet joy in the misfortunes of others...

"This man seems to have spent his entire career dressed in women's clothing," declares Eddie Izzard at the start of this enlightening biography of Stanley Baxter. That's rich coming from a man not averse to a full-on flirtation with frockery himself, but it is said with nothing but admiration. In fact the warmth with which Stanley Baxter is described by the likes of Maureen Lipman, Barry Cryer, Billy Connolly and Julia McKenzie would keep the 82-year-old comic actor comfortable for years if it was converted into central heating. What they all recognise is that beneath the multiplicity of funny faces, extraordinary voices and relentless costume changes, Baxter has never shied away from humour that requires a bit of intelligence and cultural awareness from his audience.

Last week's interviewee, Dave Gorman, becomes this week's interviewer as he poses the questions to Frank Skinner. In fact, we hear more of Gorman's mirthful laugh than we do of his words, as Skinner talks us through his part-glamorous, part-filthy career in comedy. There are the usual tales of his experiences in a threesome, but a surprising insight on how he dissects every word about his performances. There's also a lovely story about growing up in a house with an outside toilet - David Baddiel is convinced that his friend Frank was raised in the 1920s.

How familiar does this new comedy series sound? Two panels of two guests make fun of the news under the witty eye of a chairperson. It's impossible not to compare this to Have I Got News for You but I hope that this doesn't stop it from getting a fair chance to bed in and flourish. The pilot episode that I heard was recorded in the middle of the MPs' expenses scandal and the panel fed upon this like piranhas on a fresh bloody morsel. Fred MacAulay made an excellent chair but this show will ultimately be made or broken by the calibre and wit of the panellists.