Hennikay

It's the biggest day in his career and he is on the brink of closing the biggest deal in the history of Maidstone, but when Guy Starling strides into his office at Solutify Technology, a software house that develops games for grown-ups to waste their time playing on their phones, he is confronted with an 11-year-old boy, playing keepy-uppies.

And to make matters worse, no one else can see or hear him. Because he is Hennikay, Guy's imaginary friend from his lonely childhood.

Neither of them knows why he is there after all these years, but he refuses to leave and even though he sees the world through the nave eyes of a child from 1976, Hennikay might just be there to help his oldest (and only) friend in the world save the day and close the deal.

Cast:

Guy - Bill Bailey

Tony - Sanjeev Bhaskar

Marika - Elizabeth Carling

Kallie - Anna Leong Brophy

Don - John Schwab

~Hennikay - Max Pattison

Written by David Spicer

Producer: Liz Anstee

A CPL production for BBC Radio 4

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2021.

Neither of them knows why he is there after all these years, but he refuses to leave and even though he sees the world through the naïve eyes of a child from 1976, Hennikay might just be there to help his oldest (and only) friend in the world save the day and close the deal.

Guy – Bill Bailey

Tony – Sanjeev Bhaskar

Marika – Elizabeth Carling

Kallie – Anna Leong Brophy

Don – John Schwab

~Hennikay – Max Pattison

[R4 BD=20221115

After closing the biggest deal in the history of Maidstone, Guy's boss decides to reward him with an adventure-based, corporate team-building day out, which has him running around the woods shooting paint pellets at middle managers.

Not only does Guy have to deal with his scheming, back-stabbing co-workers, desperate to ruin his career and steal his glory, he also has to cope with Hennikay, his imaginary childhood friend who has turned back up in his life and is stubbornly refusing to leave, running riot in the woods with a paint gun.

But as the paint splatters and the deals sour, Guy soon discovers that in the cut-throat world of grown-up business, the only person who he can trust is the 11-year-old boy he invented back in 1976.

Acclaimed comedian (and Strictly Come Dancing champion) Bill Bailey leads a cast which includes Dave Lamb and Elizabeth Carling in this warm, funny look at childhood, adulthood and some of the follies of modern life - where a man with a confused child in his head might just be the sanest person in the room.

Written by David Spicer

Guy - Bill Bailey

Tony - Dave Lamb

Marika - Elizabeth Carling

Kallie - Hollie Edwin

Simon - Alistair McGowan

~Hennikay - Max Pattison

Producer: Liz Anstee

A CPL production for BBC Radio 4

Time has passed and Hennikay is still inexplicably and maddeningly in Guy's life. Every morning when he wakes up, his 11-year-old friend from 1976 is there, making a noisy mess, asking endless questions and generally being as annoying as all 11-year-old boys were back in 1976.

And there is nothing Guy can do about it.

So, one Saturday morning, after a particularly typical Friday night out in Maidstone, a very hung-over Guy tries to lay down some adult ground rules to his unwanted housemate and educate him about life in the modern grown-up world.

But Guy's grown-up modern world gets particularly complicated that morning when he discovers a strange woman in his spare bedroom and has no idea who she is or how she got there. Is she his imaginary girlfriend? Who keeps ordering mysterious boxes from Amazon? And when his boss's suspicious wife turns up demanding to know where he was last night and what he was doing, why doesn't he have a clue what to tell her?

If this is what modern life as a grown-up is really like, then young Hennikay is very unimpressed with how his old friend has turned out.

Cast:

Guy - Bill Bailey

Tony - Dave Lamb

Nikita - Polly Frame

Lyrissa - Tracy-Ann Oberman

Harry - Paul Panting

~Hennikay - Max Pattison

Written by David Spicer

Producer: Liz Anstee

A CPL production for BBC Radio 4

Guy – Bill Bailey

Tony – Dave Lamb

~Hennikay – Max Pattison

The pressure is on at work. Guy's company have had their best (only) idea in years (ever) stolen from under their noses by an unscrupulous rival. But luckily Guy has come up with a brilliant new idea, courtesy of his invisible best friend, Hennikay and the race is on for them to develop it before the big trade show.

And even with Guy foolishly introducing his schoolboy mate from 1976 to the wonders of the 21st century internet and the delights of expense account lunching, the friends triumph and, working together at last, they manage to hit the big deadline.

They head triumphantly to the show - where grown-up treachery is afoot and Hennikay has his young, innocent eyes opened to the cheating, lying and general down and dirty bad behaviour that modern adults call business.

Cast:

Guy - Bill Bailey

Tony - Dave Lamb

Marika - Elizabeth Carling

Kallie - Hollie Edwin

Don - Joseph May

TV voices and Pizza Guy - Matt Addis

~Hennikay - Max Pattison

Written by David Spicer

Producer: Liz Anstee

A CPL production for BBC Radio 4

Guy – Bill Bailey

Tony – Dave Lamb

Marika – Elizabeth Carling

~Hennikay – Max Pattison

Things have come to a head for Guy. He has lost his job, he's running out of money and, most worrying of all, his 11-year-old imaginary friend, Hennikay, is still a very permanent - and annoying - fixture in his life. No matter how hard he tries to persuade him that he doesn't exist, he just can't get him to leave.

And so in a last-ditch attempt to understand why his old friend has returned from his childhood and just what he wants, Guy decides to go back home to where it all started and see his Mum - who unfortunately for him, is not imaginary.

Over the years Guy has found that trips back to his boyhood home never go smoothly, but this one becomes spectacularly rocky. As mother and son share some uncomfortable home truths, family skeletons are dragged out of cupboards and Guy gets stuck in a bush.

As always, Hennikay is there to save the day and this time in the most unexpected way. Because, as he tells Guy, just because he's imaginary, doesn't mean he's not real.

Cast:

Guy - Bill Bailey

Tony - Dave Lamb

Marika - Elizabeth Carling

Sheila - Miranda Richardson

~Hennikay - Max Pattison

Written by David Spicer

Producer: Liz Anstee

A CPL production for BBC Radio 4

Things have come to a head for Guy. He has lost his job, he's running out of money and, most worrying of all, his 11-year-old imaginary friend, Hennikay, is still a very permanent – and annoying – fixture in his life. No matter how hard he tries to persuade him that he doesn't exist, he just can't get him to leave.

And so in a last-ditch attempt to understand why his old friend has returned from his childhood and just what he wants, Guy decides to go back home to where it all started and see his Mum – who unfortunately for him, is not imaginary.

Guy – Bill Bailey

Tony – Dave Lamb

Marika – Elizabeth Carling

~Hennikay – Max Pattison