Listen with Mother

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Are you sitting comfortably?" redirects here. For the album by IQ, see Are You Sitting Comfortably?.

Listen with Mother was a BBC radio programme for children produced by Freda Lingstrom. It was presented between 1950 and 1982 by Daphne Oxenford, Julia Lang, Eileen Browne, Dorothy Smith and others.

It was broadcast on the Light Programme for fifteen minutes every weekday afternoon at 1.45, just before Woman's Hour, and was a programme of stories, songs and nursery rhymes (often sung by George Dixon) for children under five (and their mothers). At its peak, it had an audience of over a million. Like Woman's Hour, it was subsequently transferred to the BBC Home Service (later renamed BBC Radio 4).

The theme music, which became synonymous with the programme, was the Berceuse from Gabriel Fauré's Dolly Suite for piano duet, Op. 56.

[edit] Are you sitting comfortably?

The show is probably best remembered for the opening phrase "Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin." This was incorporated by the 1980s Canadian New Wave band Platinum Blonde as the introductory line of their 1984 hit single "Doesn't Really Matter", varied as "Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin." The Moody Blues had a song entitled "Are You Sitting Comfortably?" on their 1969 album "On The Threshold of a Dream": "Are you sitting comfortably? Let Merlin cast his spell". IQ used it as the title of their fourth album.

In the 1983 movie "Wargames," Stephen Falken uses the phrase to begin a lecture to David and Jennifer.

The phrase is used as "Are you sitting comfortably? Good. Then we'll begin…", in the 2006 Doctor Who television episode "The Idiots Lantern".

A variant appears in the original radio-play of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where a rather strict teaching machine asks "Are You Sitting Comfortably? Then, stand up!"