Jeremy Austin

In a medium where the voice is everything, a narrator endowed with enthusiasm and intelligence is the king. And so it is with Mark Watson, who returned this week with his second series for Radio 4.

Watson was once an ultra-nervy performer who hid behind a faux Welsh accent. Now he is a fiercely intelligent, articulate comic whose mixture of brilliant observational comedy and, as he puts it, 'thought', is unmatched.