HQ

While we're grateful for anyone trying to make us laugh right now, Hudd and Quantick's Global Village never quite hit the spot. Sketches ranged from the surreal - a complaint from one of Nigella Lawson's breasts that "we never even get a mention, it's always her bloody food!" - to what the show referred to as "deliciously daft" vignettes inspired by everyday life. Someone of these had potential, like the man complaining that the drawing from his adopted African child is substandard. "I pay £14 a month and what do I get? A crap lion." But the radio sudoku sketch - a running gag about how fantastically dull such an idea would be - was just fantastically dull.

Now, I know there's no greater irritant than people whining that comedy is "just not funny". A GSOH is overwhelmingly a subjective thing and Roy Hudd has had 50 distinguished years on radio. But the same policy statement did suggest Radio 2 take more creative risks and with a series of comedy masterclasses starting next week, let's hope that's where it starts.

HQ (Saturday, Radio 2) brought the great Roy Hudd back to Radio 2 in a sketch show written by many hands among them those of his co-performer David Quantick. Quantick is a brilliant comic writer. As a performer, he has a way to go. Still, he warmed up nicely as the show went on and in the utterly unvulgar sketch where each of them played one of Nigella Lawson's breasts, overcame his awe of Hudd enough to stop reading his lines and let them bounce.

Roy Hudd and David Quantick join forces to keep the winter blues at bay. Here's a brand new sketch show full of old-fashioned fun, also starring Anita Dobson and Kevin Eldon, promising sauce and silliness. Both Hudd and Quantick have formidable reputations in this field, Hudd from all those years on this network's renowned News Huddlines (when there was a live band, a luxury only Wogan is permitted these days on his dire Sunday show) and Quantick as Radio 2's incumbent on its Blagger's Guides.

What a joy to have comic actor Roy Hudd back on Radio 2. He's joined in this new sketch show by David Quantick (The Blagger's Guide), Anita Dobson and Kevin Eldon for what we're promised will be "a half-hour of epic silliness". It's something of an inspired idea to team these two together. Self-confessed middle-aged grump Quantick, whose writing demonstrates a wonderful sense of the absurd, should prove the perfect partner for radio legend Hudd, who for 26 years kept us laughing with the excellent News Huddlines. If this is as good as that series, we're in for a treat.