Pam Ayres

Rounding off the Playhouse Presents... series, this five-part comedy sketch show makes itself comfortable on the couch for a witty variation on the therapist theme of HBO's In Treatment. Rebecca Front anchors the action as a long-suffering psychoanalyst whose appointment diary is lit up by a galaxy of stars from yesteryear, as played by some of today's finest acting talent. Stand-out headcases include Frances Barber and Mark Gatiss as Bette Davis and Joan Crawford (in Whatever Happened To Baby Jane mode), Sam Spiro (Grandma's House) as irrepressibly cutesy Audrey Hepburn and Julia Davis (Hunderby) conjuring comedic magic by mixing poet Sylvia Plath's tragic angst with the simple jollity of Pam Ayres.

After a promising pilot last year, this fitfully funny set of vignettes based around famous women visiting a therapist (Rebecca Front) returns as a series. Boasting comedic talent such as Sharon Horgan, Samantha Spiro, Julia Davis, Katy Brand and Mark Gatiss - dragged up as Joan Crawford - it's a riot when it does very silly: Sylvia Plath channelling Pam Ayres in an attempt to lift her dark moods; the squabbling, doll-sized Brontë sisters, and Jacqueline du Pré communicating only via cello.

This Playhouse Presents... production from last year returns for a series, boasting the same strengths and weaknesses as its pilot. It's undeniably pretty slight - the single, running gag is seeing absurdly exaggerated caricatures of famous historical women visit Rebecca Front's modern shrink and flaunt their entertaining neuroses. But the joke is carried through with enough conviction and élan to make it pretty entertaining.

Tonight's highlight is Julia Davis's turn as Sylvia Plath - but a Sylvia Plath who, concerned that her creativity might be compromising her mental health, is considering adopting the poetry stylings of Pam Ayres. Elsewhere, there are foul-mouthed Brontë sisters, an infuriating Audrey Hepburn and the endless bitching of Bette Midler and Joan Crawford. The cast is excellent - Davis, Front and Sharon Horgan are now augmented by Frances Barber and Mark Gatiss - and they're clearly enjoying themselves too. Good fun.

Radio 4 panel games come and go. In some cases they come, then stick around for decades after you wish they'd disappeared. But not this one, which might still be the best of the bunch. Nicholas Parsons, Paul Merton and other regulars are back for the show's 66th series - and in the first episode, fans will be holding their breath for 60 full seconds as Graham Norton achieves the rare feat of speaking for a minute without hesitating, deviating or repeating himself. Pam Ayres and new BBC2 sketch-comedy star Kevin Eldon round out a great panel.

How very British, how very self-deprecating, to name a TV series QI, meaning "quite interesting". It's a "comedy panel quiz show" hosted by the ubiquitous Stephen Fry which, in Britain, started out modestly on one of the BBC's smaller channels and has since moved to BBC One.

It's not hard to see its appeal in that country, with the combination of Fry and comedian Alan Davies, plus a revolving selection of guests. The first episode on Prime on Sunday night was, well, quite interesting. The theme was Fight or Flight, with Fry asking questions to which the panellists were expected to deliver interesting answers, if not necessarily the right ones. Why were Spitfires painted pink? What's the opposite of a flying fish? When lions fight bears, which animal wins?

The guests' efforts to deliver answers were generally nonsense, and Johnny Vegas' accent was so thick it was hard to hear what he was saying - the audience thought he was hilarious - but the answers were quite interesting and poet Pam Ayres won. The scoring system was a complete mystery but any TV which increases general knowledge has got to be a treat these days.

Pam Ayres: why opportunity still knocks

Famed for her comic verse and country burr, Pam Ayres tells Nigel Farndale about Britain's Got Talent, bad mortgages, and why she's started to write more serious poetry.

The voice of the narrator, Geoffrey Whitehead, is so familiar. There he is on Radio 4 on Friday nights playing Pam Ayres's husband in Potting On, a ghastly late-night sitcom about a plant nursery.

The offerings in Radio 4's 11.30am slot are patchy. Potting On, for example, the garden-centre comedy starring Pam Ayres, makes you want to lose your radio. For ever.

Pam Ayres: Ayres and graces

Pam Ayres tickled Seventies' TV audiences with her broad accent and innuendo-laden verses. And she's still got a rare talent for observing life's little quirks. But in a nice way.

Pam Ayres back on air - but who really cares?

Only a nation that loves its tea, its dogs and its eccentrics as much as England does could have produced someone like Pam Ayres, and then compounded the sin by providing her with the sustenance of celebrity.