BBC Radio 4 Extra

Ed Reardon (pictured) and his feline companion Elgar consider the role of cats in the radio archives.

Some of the highlights include Dawn French reading The Cat Lover by Lynne Truss; Beryl Reid providing an account of how the Post Office put pussycats on the payroll in A Shilling A Week And All The Mice You Can Eat; and a moving story set on Christmas Eve, The Mousehole Cat, in which an old moggy helps his human to feed a starving Cornish village.

Also, in Spoken Cat, Sian Phillips meets the people learning cat language so that they can communicate with their moggies, and a vintage edition of Ed Reardon's Week finds Elgar going AWOL.

Along the way Ed dangles snippets of poetry and a serenade from Si Si the famous singing cat, and tries to get tips on publishing success from Tom Cox, the author of four books about his cats and the owner of several feline social media sensations. And the cat-loving comedian Susan Calman has a clandestine consultation with Elgar.

• Saturday 24 December, 9am
• Presenter: Christopher Douglas
• Producer: Moy McGowan for the BBC

Doctor Who: Demon Quest

BBC Radio 4 Extra presents the Doctor Who adventure series Demon Quest (sequel to Hornets’ Nest), including The Relics Of Time, The Demon Of Paris, A Shard Of Ice, Starfall and Sepulchre.

Originally released in 2010 by BBC Audiobooks, Demon Quest is a five chapter play featuring the fourth incarnation of the Time Lord, played by Tom Baker, with his trusty companion Captain Mike Yates (played by Richard Franklin).

Demon Quest, written by Paul Magrs and produced by Kate Thomas, has been adapted into ten episodes for BBC Radio 4 Extra by Mik Wilkojc.

• Monday 19-Friday 23 and Monday 26-Friday 30 December, 6pm

A Haunted Christmas In The 7th Dimension (w/t)

The comedian and horror fan Robin Ince adds a frisson of festive fear to BBC Radio 4 Extra when he hosts the Haunted Christmas editions of The 7th Dimension.

Over two nights he introduces archive stories and dramas featuring yuletide phantoms, including A Dreadful Night, A Candle For Casey, After Supper Ghost Stories and Christmas Meeting, a bittersweet drama first broadcast in December 1963, starring Flora Robson as a lonely woman who encounters an apparition on Christmas Eve.

• Saturday 24 December and Sunday 25 December, 6pm and 6.15pm
• Produced from archive materials by Moy McGowan for the BBC

Comedy Club: Victor Lewis-Smith

BBC Radio 1’s festive compilation of some of Victor’s more controversial items from his original series, featuring some Christmas-wrapped prank calls to Jesus College, Cambridge and the CIA, a new Frank Sinatra box set For The Masses full of working class clichéd songs, a sharp parody of improv game Whose Line Is It Anyway? and a surprising new version of the classic film Genevieve. Plus an original Radio 1 jingle made by JAM productions.

First broadcast (and last heard) on BBC Radio 1 on Boxing Day 1992

• Tuesday 20 December, 11pm