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Comedian, television presenter and actor Joel Dommett is set to delight families with an enchanting musical journey, when he takes to the CBeebies Bedtime Story chair at this year’s BBC Proms.

Specially created for the BBC Proms’ youngest audience members, the CBeebies Prom: A Magical Bedtime Story offers an entertaining musical introduction to the orchestra. The Prom will feature music performed by Sinfonia Smith Square, conducted by Ellie Slorach, alongside a host of familiar CBeebies stars. Lydia Kirton and Rose-Marie Christian from Playtime Towers will appear as the Story Fairy and Bee, CBeebies presenter Nigel Clarke will hop into the role of Frog and Justin Fletcher (Mr Tumble) will bring the Story Tree to life.

Audiences will experience a dazzling original story written by BAFTA-winning children’s TV and comedy writer Claire Wetton, known for her work on Horrible Histories and Horrible Science.

Joel Dommett says “I’m really excited to be part of this year’s CBeebies Prom. I can’t wait to see kids’ faces as they experience the joy of a live orchestra! The CBeebies Prom promises to be a celebration of the power of music for the youngest concertgoers”

The CBeebies Prom showcases music by composers including Georges Bizet, Edvard Grieg and Florence Price, and features new music composed by Daniel Whibley with songs by Richie Webb. Production design is by Samuel Wyer (the National Theatre’s Ballet Shoes) and theatrical direction by Shelley Maxwell (Get Up, Stand Up! The Bob Marley Story, Lyric Theatre).

Two performances will take place at the Royal Albert Hall on Monday 25 August, at 12.30pm and 3.30pm. The second Prom will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 and will then be available on BBC Sounds. It will also be filmed for TV, airing on the CBeebies Channel on Sunday 26 October, and available afterwards on BBC iPlayer.

The Prom will be audio-described by Timna Fibert and British Sign Language-interpreted by Angie Newman. It will be a relaxed performance and is designed to welcome families, individuals, and groups who feel comfortable attending concerts in an informal environment. Audience members are free to leave and re-enter the auditorium as needed, and chill-out areas will be available for anyone who needs quiet time before or during the Prom.

As it’s a relaxed event, children are very welcome to bring their favourite small teddy or soft toy to cuddle up with as they enjoy the music.

Day Programming tickets, priced at just £8, will be available via the Royal Albert Hall website from 9.30am the day before the Prom (4 tickets per booker).

Now in its fifth week, the BBC Proms 2025 season, which began on 18 July, spans eight weeks and features 86 concerts, including 25 televised Proms. More than 235,000 tickets to Proms at the Royal Albert Hall and venues across the UK have been purchased so far. Over 6,000 people attended the BBC Proms in the North-East of England, including over 4,500 experiencing a Prom for the first time. The season also had a record-breaking opening weekend, with over half a million streams across BBC Sounds and BBC iPlayer.

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The bean just wants to knit.

With their back to me, Poe, the name I gave the animated brown bean in the Focus Friend app, is stitching up a little storm that will eventually become socks—if I can leave them alone. Unfortunately, I need to check my texts. I cancel the timer after six minutes, which warns me that Poe’s knitting will unravel and “they’ll be really sad.” Their shoulders slump as their work falls apart and a little bubble appears over their head. “It’s ok, we tried,” they reassure me. It turns out the text I was so desperate to see was spam.

Focus Friend, a productivity timer app designed to keep your off your phone by essentially taking it over to knit, has climbed the mobile charts over the last few days, and as of this writing sits at No. 2 on Google Play and No. 3 on the App Store. The brainchild of developer Bria Sullivan and YouTuber and author Hank Green, it briefly beat out apps like ChatGPT, TikTok and the now infamous Tea.

Focus Friend isn’t the first of its kind, but rather the latest in a growing movement of apps, including Forest, Focus Traveler, Exocus, and Focus Tree, designed to keep users from doomscrolling or dawdling on their phones. Like the Pomodoro method, the time management technique that breaks work into periods of focus and rest, these apps use a timer to encourage users to lock in and tune out everything else. Unlike the traditional, analog Pomodoro, apps have gamified the experience with rewards. For every successful chunk of time I allow the bean to knit uninterrupted, it makes me socks I can then broker for decorations. These go straight into the bean’s living space, a tiny brown room with wood floors that feels woefully empty of any life. I have the power to make the bean’s life better, if only I can keep myself from scrolling.

Sullivan has smartly designed the app in a way that instills a little bit of guilt and a little bit of love for this legume with a Hank Hill ass. (Green, she says, dictated this specific design: “He said the character should be a bean, and it should have a butt crack,” Sullivan says.) Users are asked to name their bean, which wanders around its room making puns (“Beenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” “Beanage Wasteland”) and wondering in little speech bubbles about “if beans have parents.” Sullivan says it was important to make sure the bean had not only a personality but also a point of view. It gets a little nostalgic about its own past, or wonders about who it is now. “That makes people more emotionally invested in what’s happening,” Sullivan says.

McKenna, a 19-year-old Focus Friend user who declined to give their last name, agrees with that sentiment, crediting the bean’s persona with making the app more “fun” and approachable. Although they’ve found the Pomodoro method and productivity timers to be helpful in general, McKenna says they previously haven’t been able to find one they liked until now. “I have also been using Focus Friend to set a timer for myself in the morning so I am more motivated to be off of my phone and get out of bed,” they add.

Still, even the bean isn’t immune from the siren song of a phone. Sullivan made sure to include them enjoying a little scroll, tongue out, when the app is placed into a break between focus sessions. When we talk on the phone, Sullivan herself is multitasking. She’s busy changing a diaper. “I feel like I use my phone against my will, most of the time,” she says. “I feel kind of addicted to it.” Instead of being present, Sullivan says, she’s always scrolling. “There’s times where I feel like I should be focusing on my baby while she’s, like, eating, or meditating and just being present,” she says, adding that “there’s a lot of guilt that comes with owning a phone and participating in technology these days.”