Sport is difficult to be funny about. When it works, as with Fighting Talk (Radio 5 Live, now in summer recess) it's unmissable. But that's because the panellists are funny people first and sports fans second. Too often, though, the funniest lines are left on the floor of the pub, or on the terraces, where everything said is, of course, hilarious.

Two sports comedy programmes began this week. On Wednesday Look Away Now (Radio 4, 6.30pm) returned for a three-part series. Bereft of real people being funny, it opts for the sketch-show format - wisely, because if you take real-life events and throw battalions of top joke writers at them, you are going to hit more often than you miss.

It's presented by Garry Richardson - an unusual choice, one thought when the first series was broadcast. If anyone takes sport seriously, it's him (witness Sports Talk, Radio 5 Live, Sundays, 9am, where he asks really tough questions in a manner so mild that his interviewees come away not knowing that they've been mugged). What was he doing on a show that held up to ridicule the world of which he is so much a part? But it worked. Richardson with his hair down might have sounded much the same as Richardson with his hair in a bun, but Look Away Now really doesn't need a presenter with much of a personality. The jokes stand or fall by themselves.

And what a top line-up of one-liners we got last Wednesday. Having set the tone by mocking the usual troupe of failed British players at Wimbledon (one was doing quite well until his opponent turned up) there was a fine pop at the South African rugby coach, who notoriously defended the eye-gouging in the second Test against the Lions on the grounds that the basic rules of civilised behaviour had no place on the rugby field. So nor, by extension, do bigamy, identity theft and offering sexual favours for money.

Some of it failed, dismally, but that's what happens on the day, Brian. And there was much to admire, namely a wicked “interview” with Kevin Pietersen. Asked whether he still smarted after being deprived of the England captaincy he came up with the usual claptrap about caring more for the team than himself - “after all, Garry, there are no Is in ‘Kevin Pietersen'.” Apparently he's had them removed by deed poll. “People think I call myself ‘Kvn Ptsrsn' because of my South African accent, but I'm actually being 100 per cent phonetic.”

Speaking of cricket, much was made during the Ashes series of 2005 of the footballification of the game, whereby people who didn't know one end of a bat from the other were caught up in the excitement of a great series. For a time, the summer game became as much of a topic of conversation as the year-round game. It was, to a cricket fan, a frankly unedifying sight and sound, epitomised for me when Adrian Chiles, who had always come across as an amiable if slightly dull broadcaster, went on the radio before the last Test and said that he hoped the match would be rained off so that England could win the Ashes. Only a football fan puts the result ahead of the game. Luckily the next series, in Australia, was a whitewash and the likes of Chiles went back to having sleepless nights about the fortunes of West Bromwich Albion, leaving cricket to cricket lovers, not lovers of events.

But now the Australians are back, the first Test starts on Wednesday (ball by ball coverage on Test Match Special, 5 Live Sports Extra and Radio 4 longwave) and once again the broadcasters will be hoping that Ashes fever will grip the sort of people who think that Andrew Flintoff's first name is Fred. On Saturday there was the first of six “comedy” chat shows under the title Yes It's the Ashes (Radio 5 Live, 11am), in which Andy Zaltsmann and other people paid to be funny will be reacting to events during the series in a thigh-slappingly jocular way. Now, it is possible to funny about cricket - the Australians Roy and HG have been doing it for years. But they aim at the correct audience: the knowledgeable cricket fan. Zaltsmann - who does know and love the game, and has blogs on specialist cricket sites to prove it - has aimed his, it seems, at Adrian Chiles.

So Zaltsmann's programme was filled with “hilarious” made-up facts about the greats of the game, as well as reports from Zaltsmann's friends in Australia and America about how the inhabitants were gearing up for the series. Both countries were in the grip of Ashes fever, apparently - but one of the correspondents was lying. Oh, one's aching sides.

There were a couple of star guests - the comedians Phil Cornwell and Paul Sinha - supposedly there to offer humorous insights, but mainly there to laugh at Zaltsmann's tortuous metaphors (although Cornwell did establish his bona fides as a cricket expert by asking what the significance was of the numbers underneath the crest on the players' shirts. If he didn't know that already, what was he doing on a cricket show? Oh, right - being a Tottenham fan).

This Saturday, of course, we'll be three days into the Test, and Zaltsmann will have real cricket to discuss with Frank Skinner. He likes his sport, as we all know. Football, mainly. Big supporter of West Brom. If Skinner comes, can Chiles be far behind?

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