Rik Mayall's Bedside Tales

Elisabeth Mahoney is repelled by Rik Mayall's foray into radio

Rik Mayall's Bedside Tales (Radio 4) began repellently last night. Mayall, narrating, opened his tale with the sound of a zip being fastened. Was he doing up his flies? His pencil case? What followed was a traditionally structured ("Once upon a time") piece of postmodern fantasy writing, with a character slipping out of the story to shoot the storyteller. I have a feeling I know what drove him to it.

The middle section of the story contained writing so naff and nauseating that it punctured any literary flights of fancy. You could only hope it was meant to be a spoof. Our male narrator followed the Mountain Girl into Brazilian heavily wooded hills, her "long black velvety hair tapered down to the small of her firm young back, swaying between the dimples, beckoning me" into "its magnificent secrets". She was, I should add, also "flexing in her petite, soft, leather loincloth". Of course she was.

Among soaring trunks, dripping fauna, "steaming hot waterfalls which crashed onto smooth black rock", she guided him into "every cleft and closet of those tropical pathways, leading [him] deeper and deeper".

This doesn't look great on paper. But it was so much worse read out loud, late at night, in a voice that occasionally, alarmingly, slipped back into Rick.