The new series of A World in Your Ear, which usually showcases the best of serious English-language radio from around the world, last week focused on comedy. This is not necessarily a good idea. What is typically a brilliantly eclectic programme can suddenly look feeble-minded because of its choice of laughs.

It was April Fool's Day so the programme began with phone pranks which, being practical jokes, must be the lowest form of radio humour. Even the best of people feel rattled and bullied when someone plays a practical joke on them, while the worst of us go into an inexcusable sulk.

On CKOI FM in Montreal, comedy duo the 'Masked Avengers' ring up celebrities pretending to be the Canadian prime minister. Their victim here was Paul McCartney, who was told he had won the prestigious Order of Canada. He started trying to make arrangements to go over. When they told him he'd been pranked, he asked if they were going to use the segment on their next CD. Suddenly things turned even less funny. "We're going to catch you, " he sneered.

"We're going to sue the little ass off you." There was a long, shocked pause. "Are you serious?" asked the masked avenger, and McCartney said, "No. . . Only Canadians are funny right?" There was relieved laughter all round but nobody believed him. Didn't people say Ringo was the funny one?

There was also a snippet from Brendan Balfe's strangely-named comedy show, Balfe B@rte. ie. "We could hardly have a comedy edition of the programme without featuring Ireland, could we?"

urged presenter Rosie Goldsmith patronisingly. In this clip Noel V Ginnity mines the long-exhausted vein of husband-wife comedy. His wife, 'Raquel', asks if he notices anything different about her. He guesses at new shoes, a new dress, a new hairdo. . . "No, " she says. "I'm wearing a gas mask." That's an OLD joke, and Ginnity takes threequarters of an hour to tell it, but the audience is helpless with laughter all the same.

The rise and fall of that sort of comedy which pokes fun at wives and mothers-in-law was the subject of Battleaxes and Hen-pecked Husbands. Brian Murphy (Alvin Smedley in Last of the Summer Wine, another comedy show best not watched with consensus-loving friends) traced the history of the battleaxe from Greek drama to Sybil Fawlty. He stopped just short of lamenting the 'political correctness' that has made it unacceptable to lampoon women with minds of their own.

The programme also looked at Margaret Thatcher, with theatre historian Sarah Woodcock marvelling that Britain elected a battleaxe. "It was all there . . . the voice, the way of treating men, the monobosom . . . and we still didn't recognise her." Monobosom! Word of the week.

The Documentary on One last week, first broadcast on the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Rising, was a narrative-style account of the failure to organise the troops in the North. After 90 years, though, the fact that Ulster wasn't allowed to fight is neither here nor there.

What was fascinating was the glimpse of a different military and political culture, at a time when the rising was still in living memory and the Troubles had not yet begun. The interviewees were articulate, resolute IRB men . . . and one woman, James Connolly's daughter Nora . . . who had the highest ideals and could still speak openly about making grenades out of tin cans and gelignite. The documentary was also a useful reminder that opinion on the rising has been divided ever since Easter 1916. There's nothing new in this.