Listen with Mother facts for kids
Listen with Mother was a BBC radio programme for children which ran between 16 January 1950 and 10 September 1982. It was originally produced by Freda Lingstrom and was presented over the years by Daphne Oxenford, Julia Lang, Eileen Browne, Dorothy Smith and others.
Theme music
At the start of each programme a short introduction on piano was played. The tune went to the rhythm of the words quarter to two, which of course was the time of the broadcast, and many children were helped in learning to tell the time by this ingenious device.
A piece for piano duet, the Berceuse from Gabriel Fauré's Dolly Suite, Op. 56, was played at the conclusion of each broadcast and became synonymous with the programme. It was recorded for the programme by Eileen Browne and Roger Fiske, though Julia Lang in an Anglia Television interview in the 1990s said that during her tenure when she finished reading the story she had to get up (noiselessly), rush across to the piano in the studio and play the Berceuse live.
"Are you sitting comfortably?"
Each story on Listen with Mother opened with the phrase "Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin" (sometimes "...Then we'll begin"). The question, originally an ad lib by Julia Lang on 16 January 1950, became so well known that it appears in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations It has been incorporated and sampled by many artists and musicians.
