Jon Holmes (I)

Jon Holmes stands up for Australian hoax DJs

Radio jokester Jon Holmes has stood up for the DJs who made a hoax call to tragic nurse Jacintha Saldanha.

A mainstay of Friday nights (whenever The News Quiz of the Edinburgh Fringe isn't on), Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis's satirical comedy returns for its 37th series.

Along with other regulars Mitch Benn and Jon Holmes, this week's guests were Pippa Evans and John Finnemore. While all had their strengths, my favourite moment was Finnemore's routine about the Eurozone crisis using what was described as, "the longest, most torturous and yet simultaneously the most over-simplistic analogy in Now Show history."

One of the other things I found enjoyable was the show's coverage of the Diamond Jubilee, mainly due to the fact I got just about all of my jubilee coverage from satirical shows. It's less tedious and more spiritually up-lifting than watching the news. I'm not a monarchist - I couldn't care less about some posh lady in a rather fancy hat - so for me this was a nice way of getting all the news while cutting out all the rubbish filling-in that TV channels feel they need to do.

The Now Show proves once again that it's a highly competent satirical comedy that could well continue for another 37 series...

Alice Arnold and Jon Holmes bring the glorious fantasy radio show where amazing things happen, like all The Today Programme presenters talking together and the hunt for Melvyn Bragg, who's gone missing, lost in an In Our Time machine he's built with tips gleaned on his many adventures in knowledge. Don't listen to this sitting on a rickety chair. It may collapse under the impact of your laughter. The "interview" between John Humphrys and PM Cameron on the state of their relationship and a discussion of Rastamouse in a new role are both sublime.

Radio head: Miranda Hart and Jon Holmes

Sharp, funny and properly disgusting, Hart and Holmes are an instant presenting yin-yang hit.

Comedians re-create childhood photos

Take a dozen comedians, add some snaps from the family album, mix them all up and what do you get? Featuring Alan Carr, Miranda Hart, Greg Davies, Jessica Hynes, Sarah Millican, Dom Joly, Jason Byrne, Shappi Khorsandi, Chris Addison, Jimmy Carr, Russell Howard and Jon Holmes.

Hurray! I've really gone off The News Quiz (too blue for me and too self-satisfied for its own good) so welcome back Steve Punt, Hugh Dennis, Mitch Benn, Jon Holmes and Laura Shavin with their much wittier reflection of the week. There have been Friday nights in past series where I could have hugged them for being so astute and so funny about government goings on. Even with Cameron and Clegg and their coalition comrades being much harder to mimic than Brown and Blair, Darling, Prescott et al, I'm still confident my thoughts will be echoed in the team's jokes.

You never know, it might get witty this time. The venerable topical comment panel show returns for another season. Sandi Toksvig chairs, Jeremy Hardy, Sue Perkins and brilliant Andy Hamilton are among the guests. But is the nation in the mood for comedians taking pot shots? I doubt it. These are hard times and likely to get harder. That's why the gloriously spiky surrealism of Jon Holmes's Listen Against in this slot on Tuesdays is such a tonic. If News Quiz wants to be more than a habit it had better shape up. Radio 4's new Controller is listening.

If the real world becomes too much, try Listen Against (Radio 4, Tuesdays at 6.30pm). It is so funny it will rearrange everything. Last week the pipe carrying BBC Three exploded, polluting all programmes around it; the BBC expanded into pizza delivery ("We can't leave it to the private sector..."); Gaby Roslin and Ed Stourton channelled to the centre of the Earth for Children in Need; the Dimblebys become News Brothers, a musical. Alice Arnold, Jon Holmes and company on Listen Against will brighten even the darkest evening.

Were the Monty Python team starting out today, they might conceivably come up with something like the utterly fabulous Listen Against, supposedly a news round-up with Alice Arnold in the studio and Jon Holmes reporting. It's a glorious mixture of cannibalised cut-ups from the BBC's current affairs output and segments featuring Beeb figures playing themselves (Ed Stourton and Gaby Roslin, for example, on a Children in Need expedition to the centre of the Earth).

Much of it is directed at the BBC itself, and the triumphant stand-out last week was a rolling report from the scene of what Arnold called a "broadcastastrophe". "The pipe that pumps bad TV into the nation's digiboxes" had burst, and "gallons of terrible programmes" were spilling out, contaminating all the decent stuff with BBC3 output. "Awful programmes are threatening wildlife," said Holmes. "I saw a man trying to clean James Corden off a guillemot."

The emergency services were throwing episodes of Dad's Army down the shaft to try to stem the flow. And how much was escaping, Arnold inquired? "It's estimated at up to 3,000 scraped barrels a day," said Holmes.