Maggie Smith demonstrated, as she stretched across the sofa to fill her glass for the umpteenth time, as the drunken sister in Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance, that star quality is something the audience want to drink in with the same thirst she displays for the brandy. This is hardly the stuff of end-of-the-pier, “here’s- a-funny-story” comedy. Audiences are jumping out of their seats rather than rolling in the aisles.But that’s what makes the League of Gentlemen so special. They – Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith and Jeremy Dyson – are prepared to tackle the supposedly untackleable, and through a deft combination of acting and writing turn it into disturbing comedy.Some will be offended by their sketches about the death of children, urine-drinking and grotesque scientific experiments – the flood of complaints to Radio 4 proves as much. But for my money, they should be applauded rather than condemned for – as the jargon would have it – pushing back the boundaries of comedy.Almost single-handedly, the League of Gentlemen have made dinner-jacketed sketch-comedy cred again – no mean achievement. As the boy lies insensible on the floor, the teacher moves to get a spade and bury him in the back garden. When he did, it was beautiful, like encountering the delicate light of a European forest in deepest Camden Town.Previous winners, 1991-1996: Miles Davis, Tony Williams, Us 3, John Surman, Sonny Rollins, Nikki Yeoh.ComedyBy James RamptonA demented German exchange teacher hurls boiling coffee in the face of a schoolboy who has just spurned his advances.

Stanko – he ‘s 55 and has been playing since he heard Dave Brubeck when he was 15 – was a self-effacing figure in glasses and a little African cap, who waited patiently for his turn to blow. It contains marvellously dreamy and atmospheric, yet pin-sharp and precise, music that acts as a bridge between the work of other ECM artists like Jan Garbarek and the classic arrangements one associates with Miles Davis and Gil Evans. No one hogged the limelight and each round of solos seemed like an intense conversation between friends. The themes – arranged from compositions by the late Polish composer Komeda – draw on soundtrack music written for Roman Polanski’s Knife on the Water and Rosemary’s Baby and they act as jumping-off points for heady, serious improvisations.When Stanko brought the group to London’s Jazz Cafe for a one-off gig in October, it was the concert of the year. Although he’s been recording fitfully for ECM for 20 years, his latest album, Litania – Music of Krzysztof Komeda at last provoked the interest and acclaim he deserves. And I laughed a lot, particularly at Booked! (R4), People Like Us (R4), Richard Barton GP (R4) and Messages to Myself (R4).

Finally, a mention of Cate Foster, star of The Coroner.This collection is but a tiny percentage of a year’s glorious listening. Despite fearsome political problems, our doughty programme-makers consistently give us the best radio in the world.Previous winners, 1991-1996: ‘The Gang that Fell Apart’, ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You’, ‘It is with Very Great Regret’, ‘A Memory Lost’, ‘Fairest Isle’, Leslie Forbes for ‘A History of Britain in Six Menus’/Joanna Pinnock for ‘Cry in the Dark’ and ‘Grubs Up’.JazzBy Phil JohnsonIn a year in which European artists and European labels fairly trounced the American opposition, no one did it better than the Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko. On R3 Private Passions, The Christies of Glyndebourne and, of course, the Proms were frothy white horses in a sea of magnificent music.The best dramatised books were Kes (R2), The Leopard (R4) and War and Peace (R4); the best phone-in presenter was Lorraine Kelly (Talk Radio) and the most powerful reading was The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (R4). They all illustrate the potency of radio drama.There were some wonderful features: Fiona Shaw’s foray into a convent, Taking the Veil (R4); the late Stefan Grapelli in Eighty Years on the Fiddle (R2); When Harry Met Betty (R4); Rock Kids and Secret Bedrooms (both R1); Piers Plowright’s What are they looking at? (R3); Music, a Joy for Life (CFM); The Temptations of St Antony (R3); Matt Thompson’s sensitive Touching the Elephant (R4); Roger Fenby’s Ship of Light (WS), the threatened On This Day (R4) and the new soap Westway (WS) made a feisty start.