Stanley Baxter

First of a pair of charming plays (there's another tomorrow) by Michael Chaplin about William (Richard Briers) and Sandy (Stanley Baxter), two residents at the Old Beeches retirement home for theatricals who, when the call comes, can set their differences aside and solve the occasional mystery. Today's involves Charlie (Barry Cryer), an elderly comic. His joke book goes missing and, with it, quite a lot of money. But it's a delicate situation, one that will soon call for all the tact that our duo of tetchy amateur sleuths can muster.

Rab C Nesbitt, who has been played by Gregor Fisher for the past two decades, has retained much of its grungy, cooncil-hoose ambience - the men wavering between fantasy and uselessness, the women unillusioned and razor-tongued. Some of the sting has been drawn, though: Rab, an unemployed drunk for the past 20 years, is now off the booze, his son off drugs. Scotland, still the place to go for these prompters of illusion and hasteners of death, is striving to be proper but can, in this show, still provide soil for good wit.

It is no disrespect to the show and its star, nor to its writer and creator Ian Pattison, to say it rests on and draws from the comic traditions of Glasgow, a city that saw, in a long postwar glory, the maturing of the talents of Stanley Baxter, Rikki Fulton, Jimmy Logan and the master, Chic Murray - as well as the later blaze that was and is Billy Connolly. They were acid, fantastic and in hateful love with their city and its culture, which they helped create. Fisher recalls them at their best when, in a moment of park bench amorousness towards his inevitably long-suffering wife, Mary Doll, Rab C suggests that they "nick intae the lavvie and gi'e ye a belt up the knickers fur auld times sake ... we cud gae intae the disabled, it's roomier noo we've filled oot a bit". When he waxes romantic about his own past, she reminds him that he had become a "psychotically disabled alcoholic". "Ah'm frae Govan," he snaps back. "It wudda happened onywey."

Fans of contemporary and classic comedy have had plenty to enjoy thanks to Radio 2 and Radio 4 lately. Following profiles of Frankie Howerd and Stanley Baxter, Dick Emery was the latest comedian to be featured in Radio 2's Comedy Greats series. An admirer of Emery, host David Walliams paid an affectionate tribute to a performer whose work seems sadly neglected nowadays. This despite the fact that The Dick Emery Show once pulled in TV audiences of 17 million.

Walliams and the other contributors to the programme made a convincing case for an Emery retrospective. Perhaps some of the material is un-PC or out-of-date nowadays, but that does not stop Carry On movies being broadcast on a regular basis. Time to give Emery a chance, I would say.

Radio review: The Stanley Baxter Show

Eddie Izzard is all over the airwaves, says Elisabeth Mahoney.

Second of four specials, great comics of yesteryear presented by stars of today. Last week it was Frankie Howerd and Clive Anderson, tonight it's Stanley Baxter and Eddie Izzard. To those who remembers Baxter's parodies of Hollywood (and royalty and showbiz), presented in TV shows so lavish they looked as good as the originals, Izzard seems an odd choice to appraise his talents. But this is about Baxter's comedy, a kind of showbiz cartooning that was all his own, and how he learned to perfect it. And he's still here to tell the tale himself.

"This man seems to have spent his entire career dressed in women's clothing," declares Eddie Izzard at the start of this enlightening biography of Stanley Baxter. That's rich coming from a man not averse to a full-on flirtation with frockery himself, but it is said with nothing but admiration. In fact the warmth with which Stanley Baxter is described by the likes of Maureen Lipman, Barry Cryer, Billy Connolly and Julia McKenzie would keep the 82-year-old comic actor comfortable for years if it was converted into central heating. What they all recognise is that beneath the multiplicity of funny faces, extraordinary voices and relentless costume changes, Baxter has never shied away from humour that requires a bit of intelligence and cultural awareness from his audience.

Even when I was growing up in the 1970s, Stanley Baxter seemed to be slowing down his comedic output, with his TV appearances to Christmas specials. That single show every year was so finely crafted, though, that it was an inevitable festive highlight. That Baxter is still producing great work (though mainly on radio these days) is a blessing, and this exploration of his life's work, presented by Eddie Izzard and with contributions from Julia McKenzie, Maureen Lipman, Denise Coffey and many others, promises to be rather special.

Stanley Baxter addresses a loyal nation

The comedian has been booted off TV twice but now he's back at Christmas in regal style.

Stanley Baxter returns to ITV for Christmas

Veteran comedian and impressionist Stanley Baxter is to come out of retirement and return to the small screen for the first time in more than 10 years with a one-off Christmas special for ITV1.