Radio comedy reviews

New radio comedy is often disappointing. So welcome back Down The Line - the phone-in show with a twist. Also a look at Cabin Pressure which has started a repeat run, and comedy documentary What's Funny About...

How Down The Line fooled the nation

As the spoof phone-in show returns for a lockdown special, Rhys Thomas, Charlie Higson and Paul Whitehouse remember their closest calls.

Review: Down The Line, Radio 4

I'm sorry the TV series didn't pan out. And welcome back to the radio Gary. I think it's where you belong.

Radio 4's Down the Line is back back BACK, baffling the uninitiated with its phone-in pronouncements. I love how the script is just the wrong side of normal. "Your call is an angry call, so I thought a bit of angry music would help"; "Why not put your headphones on and sit on a washing machine?"; "Have you noticed that if you say cheeky in front of something people think it's OK... how about a cheeky bit of genocide?"; "Nobody really likes those posh sausages you get in the supermarket, made of venison, apricots and snowdrops or something"; "My father would have killed for the rectum of a horse". All useful phrases for life, I think you'll agree.

It's not real but it's very funny. This spoof phone-in is hosted by (fictional) Gary Bellamy, devised and produced by Charlie Higson and Paul Whitehouse who also appear, amid a glittering talent line-up which includes Amelia Bullmore, Felix Dexter and Adil Ray in the gloriously comic array of pretend callers. It's hard to go back to the real world of phone-ins after this, so perfectly does it capture their manic levels of non-communication.

The Radio 4 phone-in where every caller's a crank

Last week, a young and cultishly popular talk radio host called Gary Bellamy returned to Radio 4 for a new series of his phone-in programme, Down the Line (Tuesday).

Moving Down the Line (the creation of Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson) to TV sounded like such a bad and simply impossible idea, yet Bellamy's People - as the BBC2 spin-off series was called - worked superbly. "Nobody watched it," says Gary Bellamy (Rhys Thomas) in this new run of the radio show. Bellamy is as strong a character as Alan Partridge for how perfectly he captures a certain type of radio presenter - and that failed TV show adds to the character. You'll now hear a Partridge-like mix of deliciously misplaced ego and barely hidden wounds. "I prefer radio," he insists. "I wanted to come back to my roots." So he's back with the "live" Radio 4 phone-in and while not every call works, the majority do, and it's a treat to have the show back again.

Down the Line is back

Editor's note: when Down the Line first appeared on Radio 4 there was uproar. A popular phone-in with an award-winning presenter most obviously recruited from a different part of the speech radio spectrum? Not a popular commission. However, Radio 4 listeners - ever tolerant - have taken the show, and its enthusiastic (and award-winning) host to their heart - SB.