Still suffering the effects of Blue Monday? Luckily, the radio provided plenty to help lift your spirits this week. Ray of sunshine Lauren Laverne (Monday, 6Music | listen on iPlayer) met the challenge with a musical selection to lift the weight of January from listeners' weary shoulders. Chris Addison from The Thick of It joined her in the studio to talk about his impending standup tour, joining the cast of Skins, and – of course – being Ollie Reeder in the hit satirical sitcom. Laverne's show is three hours of pure happiness: consume in chunks to keep your joy levels topped up or scoff it in one go and spend the rest of the day grinning and wondering whether that Stevie Wonder/Monkees/L7 album is still in the loft.
If you've been to see Ian Dury biopic Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll and it's left you wanting more, then 6Music might also have just what you're looking for. A new documentary Reason to be Cheerful: Ian Dury and the Blockheads (listen on iPlayer) – which picks through the musical history of the band and its forthright frontman – coupled to a well-timed airing of a 1979 performance at Hammersmith Odeon (listen on iPlayer), should be enough to sate your appetite. Andy Serkis, who plays Dury in the film, tells the story of this unique group and pulls together interviews with acolytes and accomplices of the Essex ambassador – not least the Blockheads themselves, with anecdotes and touching sentiments set to a toe-tapping back catalogue. The live show provides a glimpse of Dury & Co at the peak of their powers. Warning: jigging about in your seat is unavoidable.
And if that doesn't prove enough to make you smile, try to catch the last in the series of The Boosh (BBC 7 | listen on iPlayer). Fans of Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt's absurdist comedy will be aware that The Mighty Boosh (absurdly enough) started life in 2001 as a radio series on GLR, sandwiched in the middle of the football coverage. If you enjoyed the first TV series – set in a zoo – and you subscribe to the view that pictures are better on the radio, you'll like this episode. Howard and Vince have their first encounter with the cockney hitcher as they take Tony the Prawn (a psychological killer) to the animal offenders' zoo run by Bob Fossil's twin brother Wilbur. Some of the themes and songs will be familiar, some will be new. But the tunes are all earworms that will burrow their way in for a good 24 hours. "I'm Bob Fossil / And my anger is colossal ... "
If you prefer your comedy straight up, however, this week's Just a Minute (Radio 4 | listen on iPlayer) sees panellists Tony Hawks, Josie Lawrence, Justin Moorhouse and Dave Gorman at Derby University this week, talking about mature students, Derby, paying off student loans and Zanzibar (which happens to be the name of the student bar in Derby). The players' verbal dexterity is amusing, but it's their petty squabbling and Nicholas Parsons's exasperation that provide the belly laughs. And if this show doesn't snap you out of the January blues, there's probably no helping you until spring arrives.
