The fast-food chain has found that playing classical music promotes more acceptable behaviour late at night.

Classical music has often been used as a method of dispersing loitering teenagers at train stations, with Blacktown train station in Sydney using Mozart and Beethoven to dispel young people congregating in the area. But now – contrary to what you might expect if you’ve read Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange – McDonald’s restaurants in the UK have been using it to head off any troublesome behaviour from its customers late at night. Far from inciting a bit of the ol’ ultra-violence, the fast-food chain has found classical music to be an effective method of calming its late-night diners and head off any rowdiness.

“We have tested the effects of classical music in the past and played it in some of our restaurants as it encourages more acceptable behaviour,” a spokesperson for McDonald’s said in a report by The Sun. “Typically, classical music would be played from early evening onwards and, in some cases, on certain nights in a small number of restaurants.”