This program takes its title from the nursery rhyme: "I'll tell you a story about Jack-a-Nory, And now my story's begun; I'll tell you another about Jack and his brother, and now my story's done."
Alan Bennett's reading of A.A. Milne's "The House at Pooh Corner" was the last story to be broadcast on this show, before the series was cancelled after approximately three thousand five hundred episodes, because of falling ratings.
The three most frequent readers were Bernard Cribbins, who presented one hundred eleven episodes; Kenneth Williams, who presented sixty-nine episodes; and John Grant, who presented fifty-five episodes, narrating and illustrating his own stories about a caveman called Littlenose.
The celebrities who appeared on the show, chose what stories they would read, then after the show got the copyright, the writer would write up a script.
Many 1960s and 1970s episodes of this series are lost.