It’s 22 years since Absolutely has been on TV, but the comedy classic has woken up from the hiatus as sparkling and funny as ever. The first episode of The Absolutely Radio Show (Radio 4) makes the laughs look easy, using old characters as well as new.
Just hearing the word “Stoneybridge” is enough to raise a smirk from die-hard fans. It’s good to see the small Scottish town’s council meeting has embraced the new millennium with emails, texts and the same amount of faffing around as ever.
Morwenna Banks (now better known as Mummy Pig to fans of Peppa’s porcine genre) nails an update to The Little Girl’s life as her baby-voiced character explains the concept of divorce. “Your mum’s shouty friends come round at night and they eat crisps and drink more pints of wine and they say to your mum, ‘You go, girlfriend,’” she explains, to cheers.
Welsh duo Denzil and Gwynedd are back. “I’m a Welsh role model,” she announces, entering the Miss Swansea competition. “You’re a sausage roll model,” Denzil (John Sparkes) retorts. Simple but effective.
The moves into the modern age are smooth, rather than sledgehammered in, with skits on Facebook and a song about longevity which starts: “My mum’s in a home, I don’t know whose.”
A musical celebration of libraries doesn’t sound like the most exciting idea for a radio show, but 6 Music’s Paperback Writers Special is both moving and uplifting. Kill Your Friends novelist John Niven kicks off the action with a beautifully dry introduction to “the best song ever to use libraries in the opening line”, Manic Street Preachers’ Design For Life. Others don’t feel the need to continue the limited libraries-in-songs theme and it’s intriguing to hear which songs authors choose when they are let loose. Stephen King surprises with perky surf duo Jan and Dean, but it’s the stories they tell that resonate.
Vera writer Ann Cleeves can’t remember her teachers’ names but it’s librarian Mrs McGregor who sticks in her mind, because she would save Enid Blyton books for her. Crime novelist Belinda Bauer shares fond memories of evening trips to the local library in her pyjamas. And if that doesn’t make you want to prise the Xbox out of a small child’s hands and immerse them in books, what will?
