Julia Lang (actress)

Julia Lang was a British film and radio actress and radio presenter. Born in London, she is best known for presenting the BBC radio programme Listen with Mother.

The theme music for the programme was the Berceuse from Gabriel Fauré's Dolly Suite for piano duet, Op. 56. A recording was often used but in an Anglia Television interview in the 1990s, Lang said that during her tenure, when she had finished reading the story, she had to get up (noiselessly), rush across to the piano in the studio and play the Berceuse live.

She married William Shine in 1942. They appeared together in the 1948 film The Red Shoes as "a balletomane" and "a balletomane's mate". Their marriage was dissolved in 1949. She had a son, Stephen.

Lang died on 1 April 2010 at the age of 88 in Aldeburgh, Suffolk.

Film

 * The Red Shoes (1948) as a Balletomane
 * A Date with a Dream (1948) as Madam Docherty
 * The Small Back Room (1949) as Danny's Mother (uncredited)
 * Stop Press Girl (1949) as Carole Saunders
 * Dr. Morelle: The Case of the Missing Heiress (1949) as Miss Frayle
 * Under Capricorn (1949) as Susan
 * Little Dorrit (1987) as Henry Gowan's mother

Television

 * Coronation Street (episode aired 1977) as Ethel Pratt
 * Sad Story of Henry (aired in 1953) as narrator

"Are you sitting comfortably?"
Each story on Listen with Mother opened with the phrase "Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin." (sometimes "...Then we'll begin") The question, originally an ad lib by Julia Lang on 16 January 1950, became so well known that it appears up in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations It has been referenced countless times and sometimes by sampled musicians.