Paul Whitehouse

The head of the heard: Radio comedies vie for Sony Award

An unknown comedian has been shortlisted for the biggest prize in radio comedy - alongside the likes of Paul Whitehouse, Mark Thomas and Mitchell and Webb - with her first ever show. Miriam Elia landed a six-part series on digital channel BBC 7 after winning the corporation's Witty And Twisted competition last year, which sought new writers for radio. Now her show A Series of Psychotic Episodes has been nominated for the prestigious Sony Award for radio comedy.

Whitehouse and Higson: Making (radio) waves

When Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson followed The Fast Show with a spoof on phone-ins, they created an uproar. And their plans don't stop there.

Harry and Paul were ruddy good

So Ruddy Hell, it's Harry and Paul has ended and we can finally reach a verdict.

Ruddy Hell! It's Harry and Paul Review

Descending from plain old boringly unfunny to actual cringing embarrassment with sketches like The Computer Billionaires and Laurel and Hardy in Brokeback Mountain made me want to desert this sinking ship along with the rats.

Ruddy Hell! It's Harry and Paul Review

A bibulous and joyful reunion of witty chums, and more power to its elbow. Mine's another, if you're going to the bar.

Laughing down the line

Now and again, Radio 4 does something quirky, funny and totally amazing, as one of its current comedy shows attests.

Joke's over for the phony phone-in

Radio is not so short of comedy that it needs to accommodate vanity projects, and its audience will make up its own mind, without benefit of publicity stunts, whether Down the Line is good enough to stay.

Gotcha! Whitehouse and Higson Interview

Not for the first time, Radio 4 listeners are up in arms. The cause is a 'sexist', 'racist', 'rubbish' phone-in show called Down the Line. But we've been had. As G2 can reveal, it's a spoof - from the creators of The Fast Show.

It can only be hoped that Help can maintain the high standard set out by this opening episode. With Chris Langham and Paul Whitehouse - who also penned the series - at the helm, we can almost be assured this will be the case.

Elsewhere, on the evidence of episode one alone, it's hard to know what to make of Happiness (BBC2), Paul Whitehouse's midlife-crisis comedy-drama. There's precious little happiness, and only brief smatterings of (genuinely funny) comedy in it, but there is plenty of angst.