Miranda Sawyer

Just time for a mention of Micky Flanagan's Radio 4 comedy series, What Chance Change? I saw Flanagan's stand-up recently and his riffs on life in the yummy mummy enclave of East Dulwich, south London, had the audience roaring. What Chance Change? takes that routine's premise - how strange it is for a boy from the markets in the East End to move up a social class - and expands on it.

It's excellent, funny and poignant, though you can't help feeling that Radio 4's traditional audience is not quite who Micky is aiming to inspire.

Wes Butters's investigation of the life of Charles Hawtrey, Charles Hawtrey: That Funny Fella With The Glasses, on Tuesday morning was excellent, though it took time to get used to Butters's Radio 1 presenting style. I liked the musical inserts, though, and the little drop-ins of Hawtreyisms: "Oooh, goody, what?" A sad tale, this, despite the campy comments: when Hawtrey died, of complications from his alcohol abuse, he was not loved. He lived in the Kent coast town of Deal for the last years of his life. A "nasty piece of work", said one anonymous neighbour; another remembered a time when Hawtrey had passed out in one of the few bars in Deal that would still serve him. "A lot of people was spitting on him," he said. "They were."

When the Dog Dies showcased the comedic talents of another old favourite: Ronnie Corbett. Corbett played Sandy Hopper, 65, whose dog Henry barked when he heard "cat", even when used in a word like "catastrophic". "Wuff!" said Henry: which was strange, as Sandy was supposedly writing a blog. As opposed to reading it out.

But then this was an old-fashioned sitcom, written by Ian Davidson and Peter Vincent, who penned Sorry, about the clash between ageing people and the modern world. The ever-engaging Liza Tarbuck was Sandy's sassy lodger, egging him on to bond with his grandson, Tyson. I enjoyed When the Dog Dies more than I expected. Clearly, I'm getting on a bit.

The Vote Now Show, the daily dose of The Now Show on Radio 4, has improved since the beginning of the election campaign. I like the mini-sketches by contributors. On Wednesday, John Finnemore offered some lovely gags in his "manifestos for smaller parties" skit. The jokes got groanier and groanier until we got to the party that wanted "improved facilities for overweight train-spotters". "They're standing on a broad platform." No? Suit yourselves.

Stand-up almost always fails on radio, simply because at some point during the transfer between stage and studio, a keen comedy producer decides that there should be a concept. Why not have the comedian pretend to be an agony aunt? Or get the audience to shout out news topics? Or - and this is truly shuddersome - how about taking a few jokes and turning them into sketches?

Mark Steel's in Town has the dreaded concept: veteran comic Mark Steel turns up at a nondescript UK municipality, spends time there and creates a bespoke stand-up show. But this concept works because we hear none of the research, nothing of Mark chatting to locals, hanging out in local libraries and pubs. We just get a straightforward stand-up show with a receptive audience. It's great.

On Wednesday, in the first of his new series, Steel took us to Dartford in Kent. The resulting very funny half-hour took in gypsy tart, the pedants' revolt and - I was very impressed by this - an email from Mick Jagger, on holiday in Mustique, comparing the joys of his vacation location to the delights of Dartford, where he was born. Neither snotty nor sycophantic, Steel tied it all together with generous humour. Next week he visits my home town of Wilmslow. I am on tenterhooks (most uncomfortable, I must say).

Sarah Millican's Support Group is a warm and silly show, with comedian Millican broadening her routine into fictional characters and members of the audience also getting involved. The usual mish-mash you get when you try to put standup on the radio. Still, Millican is a welcoming host with a neat turn of phrase. Plus Simon Day's in it, and he always makes me laugh. "I picked her up in Aldi," he said, of an ex-girlfriend. "Literally. She was standing in front of the beans. I moved her away from the beans."

Mark Thomas, a man revered among the smart right-on, as his thing is politics, with jokes, done very forcefully. He bashes you around the head with his beliefs, then busts your gut with a bon mot. When the balance is right, it's very entertaining; when it's not, you feel like you've been beaten up and you're not sure to what purpose. Not everything in life is as simple as "working class = good", "posh = bad". We're not in the 80s any more, Toto.

Still, I like his returning Radio 4 series, Mark Thomas: The Manifesto, mostly because the ideas come from the audience. On Thursday, suggestions included: if you see a balding man with a ponytail, you are legally required to cut it off; you also have to push over anyone who dithers on a pavement; 4x4 cars should be transparent. (You'll know about these because they've been heavily trailed on R4, thereby killing the joke, hey ho.) One of the more popular ideas, though, was less of a laugh: that prime ministers should only be allowed to serve two terms. Thomas had some fun with this, telling us just how much Clement Attlee managed to get done in his short office of five years: Attlee established the National Health Service and the welfare state, he nationalised water, gas, coal and steel and he "de-Empired Britain".

All very interesting, but ruined for me by Thomas's laughable (in the wrong way) punch-line: "Let's look at our three termers - Thatcher and Blair." Stop it! Knee-jerk smugness is horrible, no matter which flag it's wrapped up in.

Vent, on the other hand, looks the terrifying in the eye and makes it funny. A sitcom about Ben, a man who fell into a sudden coma (yes, really), the first episode of this new series had Ben returning home, still pretty disabled, after months of being locked inside his failing body, unable to communicate. We hopped between real life - the ambulance, Ben's house, his life before his accident - and Ben's virtual reality, where his small daughter has grown up enough to hang out and give him advice, and there's a never-ending panel show going on, hosted by Robert Webb.

Strange? Yes. But witty and human too. Though the banter between Neil Pearson as Ben and Fiona Allen as his wife, Mary, occasionally erred on the Seinfeld side of sentimentality - no couple wisecrack all the time - this was convivial, clever drama. How refreshing to listen to a Radio 4 comedy that you feel you must keep up with, rather than one where you can predict every line.

There's no segue between that and David Quantick's The Blagger's Guide to Jazz (R2). But then there's no segue between Quantick and anything else, really. This Blagger's Guide was as frenetic, hilarious and diligently produced as all previous Blagger's, a sonic whirlwind of jokes about Ann Widdecombe, Jools Holland, Quantick's dad and more sound samples than an old Coldcut record. Oh, and facts, too. "Louis Daniel Armstrong," pronounced Quantick, "is the godfather of the father of the motherlode of the nucleus of the catalyst of the embryo of the court of King Caractacus (sound of punch)... Thanks. Louis Armstrong was a genius." He's not wrong, you know.

Bleak Expectations, Radio 4's comedy Dickens pastiche, is back for its third series. This week Mr Benevolent tortured Pip Bin, beginning by overcooking the salmon and offering red instead of white wine. I hate that red wine with fish joke, but I did enjoy the subsequent cheese torture. "I must have a cracker, maybe some chutney?" begged Pip. Tightly punned and briskly acted, with some excellent sound effects, Bleak Expectations is expert stuff, in the manner of Blackadder. It just needs a bit more madness to become a real classic.