The American singer-songwriter Billie Eilish became the latest celebrity to read a bedtime story for the BBC’s CBeebies channel on Friday. Eilish, who won her second Oscar last year with her song What Was I Made For? for Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster, Barbie, joins a rollcall of narrators so stellar that the question will soon not be who is on it, but who isn’t. She follows not only fellow singers such as Dolly Parton and Elton John, but the astronomer Brian Cox, the former Strictly Come Dancing professional Oti Mabuse, the makeover artist and TV cook Gok Wan, and any number of actors and comedians.
In publishing, the relationship between celebrity and storytelling for children too often appears to be a cynical exercise in brand extension. But the CBeebies bedtime stories are different. Many of the readers are attracted simply because they are parents themselves. Adult viewers reap the benefits too. No toddler will rush straight to bed at the sight of the actor Tom Hardy sitting on a garden bench beside his French bulldog, Blue, reading a story about the misadventures of a plastic bag – as many of their mothers professed to have done when CBeebies took to TikTok. Sold in overseas territories through the BBC’s commercial arms, the stories are also a moneyspinner for the cash-strapped corporation.
