On Radio 4 he was the last chairman of "My Word!" ( 1983–90), the panel game with Frank Muir and Denis Norden, and wrote and presented the award-winning series "Relative Values" (1987–97) which the radio critic Anne Karpf nominated as her favourite programme. ‘Crucial to its success is Michael O’Donnell whose interviewing technique is spare, not to say minimalist, and isn’t a lump-in-the-throat heavy empathy guy. O’Donnell has no hint of the Moral Majority about him but, though uncensorious, he doesn’t idealise or try to act the shrink.’