Talk:Listen with Mother

Latest comment: 2 years ago by Peteradamson in topic theme tunes

I just thought it should be mentioned that the phrase also appears in The Others (2001), since it isn't in the article (from IMDB):
The movie opens with Nicole Kidman, in voiceover, reading a story. She begins with the words, "...are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin." These were the opening words from the BBC radio programme "Listen With Mother", broadcast in the UK between 1950 and 1982. (She actually says, "Now, children, are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin," a common mis-quotation of the Listen With Mother opening.) (24.158.50.72 (talk) 00:06, 12 July 2008 (UTC))Reply

it also starts the.film The Boat That Rocked. I wondered if Daphne Whitethigh from Round the Horne was based on Oxenford. 86.179.2.160 (talk) 16:34, 9 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

I believe that the Daphne Whitethigh ("Johnny and I have found a wonderful new use for pineapple rings") character was in fact based upon the forceful and rather hoarse-voiced TV cook Fanny Cradock. -- Picapica (talk) 01:03, 30 May 2019 (UTC)Reply

Side 2 of the Small Faces' seminal album Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake (1968) starts with Stanley Unwin saying: 'Are you all sitty comftybold two-square on your botty? Then I'll begin.'

Julia Lang

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I'm rather sceptical about the tale of Julia Lang playing the Berceuse live in the studio – (1) because it's a work for four hands and (2) because the piece was not played immediately after the story (which came in the middle of the programme) but at the very end of the quarter hour. -- Picapica (talk) 01:08, 30 May 2019 (UTC)Reply

--- Your scepticism doesn't altogether seem to make sense AFAICS. As it WAS played at the end of the programme, where is the real problem? Secondly, the Berceuse may have been composed as "a work for four hands", but I have just heard a recording of it played on guitar solo (Julian Bream?), presumably without four hands! 31.125.76.2 (talk) 10:51, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

theme tunes

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The programme did NOT start with a piano introduction, but a series of bell-like chords (vibraphone?) ending on an unexpected and very memorable augmented fifth that I well recall. See (or rather listen to!) the following recording from 16 June 1965, which confirms my very young memory of 70 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9v8KL52BhmE Likewise there was a short piano intro that always came before the story: listen at 3:53 on the above. So there were three quite distinct 'theme' tunes: the 'bells' at the start, the piano intro to the story (what exactly is it?) and the final and famous Berceuse that nearly always gets mixed up as being in one of the other two theme locations.--Peteradamson (talk) 13:42, 23 June 2022 (UTC)Reply