I Do Like To be Beside the Seaside

"I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside" is a popular British music hall song. It was written in 1907 by John A. Glover-Kind and made famous by music hall singer Mark Sheridan who first recorded it in 1909. It speaks of the singer's love for the seaside, and his wish to return there for his summer holidays each year. It was composed at a time when the yearly visits of the British working-class to the seaside were booming. It can be heard at the end of the "Seven Seas of Rhye" as it fades out.

It was, for a long time, used as a signature tune by Reginald Dixon MBE, who was the resident organist at the Tower Ballroom, Blackpool between 1930-1970.

Lyrics

Oh! I do like to be beside the seaside
I do like to be beside the sea!
I do like to stroll upon the Prom, Prom, Prom!
Where the brass bands play:
"Tiddely-om-pom-pom!"
So just let me be beside the seaside
I'll be beside myself with glee

And there's lots of girls beside,
I should like to be beside
Beside the seaside!
Beside the sea!

Use in music and film

• The song was briefly chanted at the end of Queen's song "Seven Seas of Rhye", and whistled at the beginning of "Brighton Rock".
• Sylvia Scarlett (1935), starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant.
• Bank Holiday (1938), starring Margaret Lockwood and Hugh Williams. The tune is used as a theme several times during the film.
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939), starring Basil Rathbone, involves a heavily disguised Holmes singing the song. An anachronism, as the film was set in 1892 fifteen years before the song was written.^{[citation needed]}
• Mr Moto's Last Warning (1939), starring Peter Lorre and George Sanders. The antagonist's (Ricardo Cortez) ventriloquism act features a dummy singing the song while he drinks a glass of water and smokes a cigarette.^{[citation needed]}
• Carry On... Follow That Camel (1967): when the foreign legionnaires become lost in the North African desert they sing the song.^{[citation needed]}
• Oh What a Lovely War (1969) features a pierside scene where Sir Douglas Haig is trying to recruit for the First World War, with the words of the song changed to “I do to like to see a lot of soldiers”.^{[citation needed]}
• An Awfully Big Adventure (1994), starring Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman, includes a scene where two theatre troupes sing the chorus of the song while riding a bus to a football game.^{[citation needed]}