Speechification

Radio 2’s occasional oral history strand is called Don’t Start Me Talking. This one’s about the second world war and it’s a contribution to the BBC’s remembrance season. Don’t expect anything cutting edge, just old people talking about their experience of the war—no narration, no interrogation. The programme starts with Vera Lynne and ends with The Last Post… It’s really good (MP3).

My ten year-old son’s latest reason for refusing to get out of bed before eight O’Clock on a school day is a brilliant twelve-part story by Malorie Blackman on BBC7. It’s a nicely told plucky-adolescent-saves-the-world thriller called Hacker and it’s got computers in it but not in an annoying way.

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.

This won’t go in the podcast because I just feel bad about uploading This American Life while they’re making such an earnest effort to make a living from this stuff over there. So you’ll just have to get over to the web site where you can listen to the show for nothing in your browser (or pay for a download). The second item in this episode (which starts at about 8:10) is a really gorgeous little story, told by crime writer (Clockers and Lush Life), TV script writer (The Wire) and screenwriter (The Color of Money) Richard Price.

It’s a snapshot from the time he’s spent shadowing NYC cops while researching his writing and it was actually recorded at a ’storytelling club’ in New York that I’d now really like to visit called The Moth (and they have their own excellent podcast). His language is so disarming, so light of touch (and so American) you’ll find yourself laughing with pleasure at the dialogue and the picture painted (or your money back).

A creepy bedtime story for you: the first episode of Richard Matheson’s classic post-Apocalyptic Vampire tale I Am Legend [MP3] from BBC7. Forget the recent Will Smith remake, or even Charlton Heston’s Omega Man - this is the real thing. If I was on Watchification I’d have been adding all the British B-Movie stuff BBC4 has been featuring, but you’ll have to be satisfied with this classic pulp instead. You can catch the rest of the episodes here.

In our house we are exceptionordinarily fond of Lauren Child and especially of Clarice Bean, her resourceful and funny character for 8-12 year-olds. I’ve read all three of the Clarice Bean novels to my older two kids and we really definitely can’t wait for her to write another one (although we suspect that her absolutely mega-blockbuster picture book brand Charlie & Lola is probably taking up all her time right now).

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.

Another one from the archive. I’m going to attach a warning here. If you’re a parent (or just a bit sentimental - or, like me, both) you might want to skip this one. Kids miss their mums and dads when they’re away - even when they’re ‘away’ at Her Majesty’s pleasure.

Here’s a programme from June 2005 about a scheme that encourages incarcerated parents to record stories for their kids at home. Even parents who can’t read can join in: storytellers help them to come up with their own stories for the tapes. Sometimes they sing. It’s heartbreaking, really. And thought-provoking (what do we do to a family when we take a parent away and lock her or him up?). MP3.