Nigel Smith

The final of Nigel Smith's The History Plays, a History of Blair in 9 1/2 Voices, was about the gap between image and truth. The brilliant premise here was that this was a conversation between two impressionists, Sue (Fiona Allen), waiting to do a BBC audition, and Blair (Jon Culshaw) whom she assumed was an impressionist who didn't want to climb out of character before being seen. "You've mastered the walk, like a peacock, both arrogant and anxious," she compliments him.

Culshaw doesn't just do Blair, he does him through the generations, redefining personality and accent. There are many lines which read like the pithiest of references: "No one had any idea you had principles until you invaded Iraq - on a point of principle." Though the play ends with the pair in a desert, stalked by grief, Blair remained a spooky presence, all spin with nothing substantive, an impression of an impression, which may have been the honest truth.

Jagger in Jail, the first of five counterfactual History Plays was very nice. Written by Nigel Smith, it depicted the drug-busted Rolling Stone in the Sixties sharing a cell with a post-office robber who turns out to be an old schoolmate. Banged up for three years, he's missed the revolution.

"The governor let D-wing watch Ready Steady Go! the other Friday, but there was a bit of a riot over Cathy McGowan's minidress, so never again," he tells Mick - who, he feels, gets far too much publicity. "There's wars and riots and marches all over the shop and what do we get in the papers? Your ugly mug every day," he says. "I feel that way about Herman's Hermits," Jagger replies.

Writer Nigel Smith conducted exhaustive research for this comedy series about a man in a coma: he was lying in one himself a few years ago. The central character Ben (played by Neil Pearson) is not the most reliable of narrators - his mind wanders from real memories to imagined conversations with his toddler daughter who drinks vodka from a baby's bottle and is voiced as a middle-aged vamp by Leslie Ash. From the ghastly fear of the music one's family might play in the hope of speeding up a return to consciousness to the arrival of Robbie Williams at another patient's bedside - where he is mistaken for Jesus - this is full of restorative laughs.

You don't have to have heard previous series of this or the full length play last Friday night. You'll catch on right away that Ben (Neil Pearson) is coming back home after a spell in hospital when he's been unconscious, nearly died, is now making a difficult recovery. But it might help to know that it's still bitingly funny, whether about being a patient or a son, a husband or a father. It's written and directed by Nigel Smith and based on his own grim experiences which, with good luck, he's survived and now, with rare skill, he's transformed into comedy.

Original drama, for which this Friday slot was invented but has lately felt the cruel pinch of budget cuts, returns with an hour-long play by Nigel Smith. It's a bridge between his last series of the same name and the next (which starts next Tuesday at 11.00pm). All of them fall within the description "black comedy" and funny they are while being based on Smith's own experience of being very ill indeed. His book, I Think There's Something Wrong with Me, explains all but the radio dramas have the huge benefit of a superb cast in which Neil Pearson shines.