Fags, Mags And Bags

Fags, Mags and Bags (Radio 4, Wednesdays) is that sitcom set in a Glasgow corner shop with an Asian proprietor whose capacity for scrapes and misunderstandings is endless. Somebody must love it. It runs to series after series. No sooner have I finished avoiding its repeats in the 6.30pm slot than the jingling signature tune signals a new run in the mornings. If Radio 4 were to bring in a show called The Aagh Factor this would be my first nomination. Perhaps someone to whom it appeals could explain why it never seems to leave the air.

The sitcom set in a Glasgow corner shop returns for a welcome new series, its fifth. Written by and starring Sanjeev Kohli and Donald McLeary, Fags, Mags And Bags is multicultural, without being the least bit worthy or earnest, and it's genuinely funny. In particular, shopkeeper Ramesh (Kohli) is a great comic creation. In the opening episode of this six-part series, the arrival of a new butcher's shop brings strife to the street.

Fags, Mags and Bags is back

One of the most enjoyable days in my tenure as Radio 4 blogger was spent in a Sauchiehall Street studio in Glasgow with the team behind Lenzie's best-known radio sitcom Fags, Mags and Bags. They were there to record episode four of the new series - which starts today at 11.30 - and I was there to sit on a sofa and eat doughnuts purchased from the Greggs round the corner.

Recording Fags, Mags and Bags

This week in deepest, darkest Glasgow I've had the great pleasure of producing the 3rd series of corner shop comedy Fags, Mags & Bags for BBC Radio 4.

A second six-part series of that United Nations of Accents set in the shopping area of Glasgow. Not that Glasgow itself lends any atmosphere to the show, but it does explain the number of Scots appearing alongside English types of various geographical provenance, and several Indians.

But the action of Sanjeev Kohli and Donald McLeary's sitcom is hardly site-specific - instead it dwells in a slightly surreal world of non sequitors and one-liners, of jokes that stumble over each other in their urge to be heard, of gentle puns and mundane, everyday phrases rendered hilarious by context and fine acting. Plot? Well, in this first in a new series there's a missing cat and the problem of telling Brian the cobbler that he smells terrible. But you don't come here for the story, you come for the sheer joy of hearing clever people having fun with words.

Sanjeev Kohli in 'woeful' blast at BBC

Sanjeev Kohli, the Scots star of the BBC television series Still Game, has branded Radio Scotland's comedy output as 'woeful'.

Rising star Omar finds shop talk is full of laughs

Talk about being thrown in at the deep end. In his first professional acting role, 18-year-old Omar Shaza was charged with playing the comic foil to Sanjeev Kohli, immortalised in Scottish comedy lore as Still Game's curmudgeonly shopkeeper Navid.