Listen with Mother

Image: Daphne Oxenford, presenter of Listen With Mother, in October 1952.

Listen With Mother was first heard on 16 January 1950. It offered a mix of nursery rhymes, stories and music for the under-fives and their mothers but over the years developed a following across the generations. Each episode ended with the Berceuse from Faure's Dolly Suite, played on the piano by Eileen Brown and Roger Fiske.

Listen with Mother was broadcast at 1.45pm when children would be ready to concentrate after their lunch, and mothers would have time to sit with them. The presenters - including Daphne Oxenford, Julia Lang and Dorothy Smith - adopted a new intimate tone, talking as though to each child alone. The centre of the programme was the story, preceded by the calming phrase "Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin". The question, originally an ad lib by Julia Lang, became so well known that it ended up in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.

When it was announced in 1982 that Listen With Mother was ending, there was a public outcry, and a petition supported by MPs and celebrities was delivered to Downing Street, along with a letter of protest from concerned professors of education. Today young children can hear CBeebies Radio every day online.