Richie Webb

Garry Richardson was last week declared by a listener to Today to be the real Alan Partridge, which is a bit unfair to all the other sports reporters who must have gone into the making of Steve Coogan's fictional broadcaster. And yet, and yet... There's something about Garry's hosting of this sports 'n' jokes show which might well mark him out as chief contender for the Partridge crown. Joining him to fling wisecracks at the World Cup and all else sporting are writer-performers Laurence Howarth, Richie Webb and Dave (the voice of Come Dine with Me) Lamb.

One of my favourite comic writers, David Quantick, turns his comedic gaze to the arts and popular culture. With assistance from Daniel Maier, Richie Webb, Margaret Cabourn-Smith and Jane Lamacraft. Expect humour on a par with The Now Show and Harry Hill's TV Burp (two projects Quantick has also had a hand in).

To find myself recommending a makeover of any genre is a first for me. But the 15 Minute Musical is hardly in the same league as those bowel-evacuation-obsessed offerings on television.

In this series written by the sharply pointed comic nibs of Dave Cohen, David Quantick and Richie Webb, celebrities and politicians get a West End revamp, and in timely fashion, following last night's US Presidential Elections, the focus here is on Barack Obama. But that's where all actuality ends, for this is summer lovin' (and loathin') in the style of Grease. Obama is the John Travolta character and his Olivia Newton-John equivalent is Hillary Clinton.

As musicals go, its main attraction is the power to invoke an entirely enjoyable cringe. As song-writing goes, this is the one and only time you'll ever here 'Hillary' rhymed with 'ancillary' and 'capillary'. Genius.

Another six-episode package of pocket-sized feasts of song and dance (not seen, for obvious reasons, but referred to for one of those staples of radio comedy, the cheap laugh) from the fluent pens of Richie Webb, David Quantick and Dave Cohen.

The first is the strangest, as Washington High School Musical depends, for its cutting-edge satire, on the contest for the Democratic nomination between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, so there's a certain air of old news about it. Also old musicals - this is less High School Musical than Grease. So Clinton gets to sing a wistful ballad which goes, in part, Hillary, the lady they tried to pillory/ I am ancillary to you. It's better than that, though. There's a nice anti-Bush rocker with the chorus: Go, Georgie go/ Georgie no good and the Little Richard-esque 'Barackobama alopbamboom'.

Tonic of the week was Westminster Side Story, the first in a new run of 15-Minute Musicals. The pastiche of West Side Story was inspired, and the political jokes were convincing as two gangs, Gordon's Goodies and the Hugger Hoodies, battled to dominate the centre ground.

Written by Dave Cohen, David Quantick and Richie Webb, performed by Webb, David Lamb and Mel Hudson, it was just the thing to blow away gathering clouds of conference-season cant.