Anne Karpf

Quando, Quando, Quando (Radio 4), a new comedy series set in a hair salon, at least has the benefit of that energetic cartoon style that has become so popular in Radio 4 comedy over the past few years - bathetic narrator, comic sound effects, jokey little vignettes. In episode two, the salon is overrun with literally lousy schoolchildren, and solves the problem by the liberal use of sheep dip. Fatuous stuff, but the gabby assistant played by Catherine Tate is perfect.

Comedian John Shuttleworth, the anorak from hell, has moved from Radio 4 to Radio 1, but one hour of him going on about his son Darren who works at Victoria Wine, playing Demis Roussos, and demonstrating his non-existent embarrassment threshold, was 55 minutes too long.

It's been a while since anyone dared claim that they were doing satire, until Struck Off And Die. This two-doctor combo finished their Radio 4 series with a look at ageing: not so much bedpan humour as colostomy jokes, along with quips about incontinence, dentures, and dribbling. They were sharp on how old people are patronised, and offered good advice to oldies about [how] to sabotage their children's Christmas dinner: repeat throughout the meal "I hate turkey"

Whole chunks of Munnery's show are hilarious, but occasionaly it runs out of steam, either through inaccuracy (show surely wouldn't insult Stu for his fatness - a running gag - but defend him against body fascism) or by going for easy targets and turning show into the demonised leftie of Portillo-ish imaginations rather than the real and much funnier one

This trio of young male American comedians also spends an awful lot of time on the kind of American whackiness which doesn't travel well [...] But suddenly there are tantalising snatches of inspiration, like the Woody Allenesque conversation between a North American Romeo and Juliet frankly disclosing their courtship techniques. Then it's off onto something else.

Women's Troubles starts with a terrible handicap, the excruciating chairing of Frances Edmonds. Here is a woman who appears to believe that studied verbosity - especially if tricked out with a babyish voice and a camp jolly hockey sticks attack - is inherently comic, and words like "cogitations" and "luminary" signs of wit. [...] On the other hand, the team captains - the ubiquitous Jo Brand and Jan Ravens - and their female guests are genuinely funny.

On a neighbouring day at the same time on the network is Darling You Were Marvellous, a panel game about showbiz, has a fair to middling team [...] but a terrific chair. Sandi Toksvig has already demonstrated her brisk wit on Just A Minute, and here again she exercises it splendidly.

Sometimes Herring and Lee sound too much like clones of their generation - their opening jokes might have come from The Mary Whitehouse Experience - but there are undoubtedly some inspired sketches, like the recent skit on the University of Life, whose graduates have learnt how to write letters to the Daily Star saying that all criminals should be castrated.