Laura Solon: Talking And Not Talking

There are programmes that ring their own leper-bells, so you know you can avoid them. An all too typical example is Laura Solon: Talking and Not Talking. The description given on the BBC's iPlayer includes the words 'packed with bittersweet character monologues and cuttingly modern sketches', which is another way, as even the most cursorily experienced listener will recognise, of saying 'not very funny'.

Laura Solon's second series of Talking and Not Talking puts bizarre pictures in your mind. In half an hour, she packed in many beautifully worded sketches. Some were one-liners ('I guess the first tattoo I had was really just to annoy my father. But then it did say, ROD OFF DAD YOU BIG GAYER right across my forehead'), some could have been entire films (I loved the story about going on a round-the-world yacht where every other crew member was a fortysomething divorced woman).

Solon's editing is excellent; very few sketches milked the joke too long. As a Perrier winner, she understands the rules of stand-up: if you're doing badly - get off. And if you're doing well? Get off.

Laura Solon: Talking and Not Talking returned for a second series yesterday, and her writing and performance really does suit the medium. On radio, Solon necessarily concentrates most on voice and gently ticklish scenarios, told by characters who are often silly, but at least faintly recognisable too.

I liked the short sketches best, with their glimpses into peculiar corners of lives and minds. A mother explained that she and her partner were bringing their children up bilingually to give them a head start in life. Unfortunately, she added, neither of these languages are English, so we have no idea what they're saying. A hairdresser trilled on predictably about her job, and how she is like a counsellor to her customers. Then she said, quietly, oddly: And you have the added bonus of being able to keep your client's hair.