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Shy Baby
Shy Baby
Jul 13, 2025 7:00 AM

Author:Gary Ogin,Stuart McLoughlin,Alex Tregear,Polly Barsby

Shy Baby

A BBC Radio 4 comedy exploring the crippling effects of acute social anxiety on work, hopes and relationships, starring Stuart McLoughlin. 'Shy Baby' was originally broadcast as the 'Afternoon Play' on 17 Mar 2011. Lionel Stillman has a new job, a girlfriend he thinks he loves, and a secret ambition - to be a stand-up comic. But he also has a problem. People make him nervous. As Lionel stumbles from bad date with Emma to bad first day at a call centre, he struggles with an inner voice telling him he's boring and useless – 'or just plain weird'. At first, Emma thinks he's attractively shy. Then she decides he's a drinker. But Lionel does have friends. At a weekly support group his fellow sufferers Simon, Max and Rosie uncover his ambition to be a comic and encourage him to take it further by setting a challenge: to perform in a comedy club. As the night approaches, the idea seems ludicrous. How can a man who can't bring himself to meet his girlfriend's parents stand up and perform in front of a raucous pub crowd? Rosie holds the key. 'Shy Baby' features Stuart McLoughlin as Lionel, Alex Tregear as Rosie, and Polly Barsby as Emma. The play was researched with the help of Social Anxiety support groups in London and Bristol.

Reviews

I would always prefer to go get another Dickens off the shelf than pick up a new book by someone I've not read yet

—— Donna Tartt

He's a marvellous writer ... He's very, very good

—— William Trevor

I love all of Dickens

—— Jo Brand

Coady's achievement here in depicting small-town rumour as an almost elemental force is matched by the complexities of her character-making and by a rare restraint and control

—— Time Out

Catches the absorption and giddy rush of adolescent love... It is also, for all the tragic momentum and the apparently kamikaze consciousness of many of its characters, often funny and quirkily observed. Quietly compulsive and finally moving

—— Times Literary Supplement

A heart-stoppingly moving story... Murakami is, without a doubt, one of the world's finest novelists

—— Glasgow Herald

Evocative, entertaining, sexy and funny; but then Murakami is one of the best writers around

—— Time Out

Norwegian Wood . . . not only points to but manifests the author's genius

—— Chicago Tribune

An intimate and dark story... A beautifully introspective novel that made me feel all the emotions

—— Cosmopolitan

Murakami must already rank among the world's greatest living novelists

—— Guardian

Such is the exquisite, gossamer construction of Murakami's writing that everything he chooses to describe trembles with symbolic possibility

—— Guardian

Vintage Murakami [and] easily the most erotic of [his] novels

—— Los Angeles Times Book Review

[A] treat...Murakami captures the heartbeat of his generation and draws the reader in so completely you mourn when the story is done

—— Baltimore Sun

Murakami's most famous coming of age novel of love, loss and longing

—— Dazed and Confused

Catches the absorption and giddy rush of adolescent love... It is also, for all the tragic momentum and the apparently kamikaze consciousness of many of its characters, often funny and quirkily observed.

—— Times Literary Supplement

[A] treat . . . Murakami captures the heartbeat of his generation and draws the reader in so completely you mourn when the story is done.

—— The Baltimore Sun

One of the most poignant and evocative novels I have ever read

—— Palantinate

Poignant, romantic and hopeless, it beautifully encapsulates heartbreak and loss of faith

—— Sunday Times
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