Tim Bodett's small town stories could easily slip into folksiness, but that's not the root of his writing. As he writes on his website: "I'm not a more decent person because of rural life, but I act more decently than I probably would if I didn’t have to see these people again." BBC7 is broadcasting his series of Alaskan Christmas stories, Christmastime at the End of the Road, and their gentle, Keillor-esque drollery seems like a pretty good expression of the season to me. [MP3]

P.S. How do you like them Christmas decorations? The animated gif throwdown starts here.

I enjoyed using the theft of £7M by hackers in the story to help me scale the US bank bail-out for the boy: "you know those hackers stole £7M? Well, George Bush wants to give the banks a huge amount of money too, but it's not 7 million or 70 million or 700 million or even 7 billion or 70 billion but 700 billion dollars!"

Here's episode one and you can hear the other eleven episodes here on BBC7's excellent Big Toe Books page until 5 October. It's well worth bookmarking this page if you have kids: there are always at least half-a-dozen stories to listen to here. Highlights at the moment include Fiddlesticks by Alan Fraser and The Lost Boys' Appreciation Society by Alan Gibbons.

Paul Scofield was one of our greatest Shakespearean actors until his death in March, noted for his distinctive voice and delivery, and most famous for his generation-defining Lear, and his Thomas More in A Man For All Seasons. Personally, my favourite role of his is the droll, slightly camp narrator of Patrick Keillor's peerless London, and its follow-up Robinson In Space.

Unfortunately, this tribute turned out to be simple rebroadcasts of just three plays, which are all a bit long for Speechification, but if you have an hour and a half to spare, this is a heads-up that they're all available on Listen Again for the next week:

• Anton in Eastbourne, Peter Tinniswood's last play, written as a tribute to Scofield and his great love of Chekhov (Listen Again).
• Macbeth, with Peggy Ashcroft (Listen Again).
• Dionysus, with Diana Rigg and Chiwetel Ejiofor (Listen Again).

BBC7 just ran an excellent reading (by Elisha Mansuroglo) of Clarice Bean Spells Trouble in the early morning Big Toe Books slot (I keep meaning to put the show on while we're having our breakfast. I wonder if a nice story might suppress the breakfast-time shouting and violence). So here, in a departure from our usual programmes with blokes talking about caves or electro music, is part one. There are seven parts all together and you can listen to them all on the Big Toe page until 23 April.