The Jason Byrne Show

Comedy is such big business nowadays that many stand-ups are too busy working on the holy grail of television or performing in massive arenas to ever find time for radio. Thankfully though, there remain some who still enjoy the medium and understand there is a whole different set of skills required to be successful there.

At the beginning of the new instalment of The Jason Byrne Show, the Irish comedian is spending so much time making visual gags that the listener's role is becoming redundant. However, it isn't long before this changes and Byrne's quick-fire reactions to comments from the audience proves laugh-out-loud funny.

The best exchanges, all based around the theme of work for this programme, are with a member of the public who has left nursing to pursue a radical career change as a roofer. When a back injury makes that vocation untenable, she moves on to counselling and, would you believe, clutter control.

While the majority of Byrne's stand-up is genuinely very funny, some of the sketches scattered throughout does not hit the mark.

The Jason Byrne Show (R2, 10.00pm) returns for a third series of energetic stand-up, sketches and audience participation with an episode themed around relationships. Byrne, who is a talented Irish comedian, asks whether married audience members would equate their partnership to Halley's Comet or a pair of parallel trains, and wonders about the etiquette of proposing in a pub.

Gangly Irish stand-up Jason Byrne likes to dash about the stage, giddily enacting his rib-tickling anecdotes. On the radio, he expresses that same exuberance by gently interrogating his live audience and hooting at their responses - and his laughter is infectious. This third series kicks off with an age-old comic subject and Byrne favourite: marriage. Between comic sketches, he regales us with tales of his own, from the terrors of the missus's dinner parties to conjugal sex. Goodness knows what his (presumably very understanding) wife will make of it, but Byrne is guaranteed to cheer up every other listener's evening.

Jason Byrne interview

Jason Byrne is recognisable as a record-breaking comic, who is the biggest ever selling Edinburgh Fringe artist.

Jason Byrne has the honour of providing half of the official comedy on 2 at the moment - Vic Reeves's panel show Does the Team Think? makes up the other 50% - though regular presenters Mark Radcliffe, Jonathan Ross and Alan Carr can all make you splutter into your cuppa. Byrne, though, is different: his show is proper stand-up, complete with audience interaction. There are a couple of silly sketches but the bulk of his half-hour is like being in a decent comedy club with a much-more-than-decent comedian. The lines are sharp but it's the atmosphere and delivery that make the show. This week's topic was food. Byrne asked if anyone had ever eaten something they shouldn't. "A tick!" came the bizarre answer. "You mean the insect?" asked Byrne. "Or maybe you stopped talking and meant to say 'tac' after that." Ace.

For Jason Byrne, disaster is never far away

Energetic Irish stand-up Jason Byrne is back with a new series of his Radio 2 show, and he took a moment to tell us about how events in his own life provide him with even the most unlikely material he could wish for.

Jason Byrne, who follows Vic Reeves' show should have him weeping into his pillow. Not because what he does is that groundbreaking - it's just observational stand-up and sketches - but it's obvious that someone has sat down and thought about what he was going to say, memorised and rehearsed it, rather than believe that all you have to do is show up and be brilliantly funny because it's part of what you are.

Why do you have to sit in chairs designed to hold the bottom of a five-year-old when you visit your child's form teacher at parents' evening?

It's playful accurate observations like this that make comedian Jason Byrne such an engaging host. He ensures life's shared experiences - starting with education - are far funnier than they ever seemed at the time.