Comic relief at the end of summer

RadioReview: The default station in my house this week was BBC 7 and if I had broadband it might become more than just an occasional listen.

As RTÉ's summer schedule struggled to the finish, a bit of comic relief was called for and the BBC's digital station is wall to wall with comedy and drama, a mix of repeats and new material.

This week saw the end of Ballylenon (BBC7, Friday), one of its more low-key, gently comic series. Written by Christoper Fitz-Simons, the six-part comedy drama set in a small village in Ireland in the 1950s dates from the time when Ballykissangel was in vogue - the main characters were Phonsie, the cute local estate agent and Muriel, a woman who has the sort of religious visions guaranteed to bring prosperity to any village. The stellar cast that included TP McKenna, Stella McCusker and Ali White has helped it age exceptionally well.

Though for classic radio drama it's difficult to beat Alan Bennett and his Talking Heads series of monologues, which was repeated every day on BBC 7. On Thursday, Patricia Routledge, in a performance not too far removed from her fabulous Hyacinth Bucket creation, played that scourge of public representatives everywhere - a self-appointed pillar of society with a busy pen and a great deal of stationery at her disposal. A personal favourite was "Chip in the Sugar" (Wednesday), a monologue read by Bennett, about Graham, a middle-aged man with grey socks, sandals and a plastic mac who lives with his mother. Their cosy, interdependent world - "if there's one thing mother and me agree on is that red is a common colour" - is shaken when Mr Turnbull, an old flame of mother's, turns up and proposes. It's a gem.

Alan Bennett was heard again in Peter Cook in his own Words (BBC R4, Wednesday) the first of a four-part series exploring through archived interviews and sketches the life and times of the comic genius. Presented by Michael Palin, the first part looked at Cook's privileged early years, which were very different from his Beyond the Fringe co-conspirator Bennett, with his "oop north" accent and working-class background. Even before Footlights and his ground-breaking Edinburgh debut, Cook, as a second-year undergraduate in Cambridge was earning his living as a comedy writer. Some of his college skits had been noticed by an agent who promptly signed him up to write an entire West End show for Kenneth Williams. Next week, Palin looks at Cook's creatively rich but deeply troubled partnership with Dudley Moore, a must for Derek and Clive fans.

Decades later Cook and Moore would still say that the best sketch Cook ever wrote was the one about the one-legged actor auditioning for the part of Tarzan "a role for which two legs would seem to be the minimum requirement". Co-incidentally I had heard that sketch for the first time two weeks before on Balfe B (RTÉ Radio 1, Saturday). Where else would you hear that sort of stuff except on Brendan Balfe's hour-long, eclectic collection of comedy sketches and gags? From the corniest Bob Newhart gag to newer material from Mario Rosenstock's Gift Grub, it was superbly put together by Balfe but the programme appears to have got the heave-ho in the Saturday schedule to make way for Marian Finucane, which is a shame. Balfe is standing in for Ronan Collins next week but whether it's with the same comedy format is not clear.

Another gem was the Book on One (Late Date, RTÉ Radio 1, nightly), which had John McGahern reading from his autobiography, Memoir. It must be a bit for a coup for the station, the book wasn't published until Thursday and it's rare for a book to be so aired before it's on the shelves. It meant that listening to McGahern all week, with his soft Leitrim accent, was like being handed a delicious appetizer.

On Wednesday, McGahern conjured up with three-dimensional force the figure of Canon Reilly, parish priest of Ballinamore, a fierce man who exerted iron-fist control on all in his parish and who always carried a small leather suitcase with him. McGahern and the other children assumed it contained sacramental equipment of some sort until the day he caught a child stealing from the poor box and the suitcase opened to reveal a length of electric cable which Reilly used to beat the child until he was a pathetic crying heap.

But why is the Book on One not a stand-alone programme? Why is it part of Val's Joyce's numbingly eccentric Late Date (a favourite of the Taoiseach, incidentally, as revealed in The Irish Times Magazine in July).

On Wednesday McGahern's intensely felt, quietly delivered, poignant memories were sandwiched between a rousing song from Brigadoon and Peggy Lee singing Black Coffee. Eccentric isn't in it.