A blizzard sweeps across Copenhagen. Warm and secure in the hotel kitchen, Bent spends his night shift as he always does, mostly drunk, mostly asleep – until something disturbs him from his boozy slumbers …

Add an antique rotary telephone, some old portraits and Lobster Thermidor into the mix and you have most of the ingredients for ‘Room Service’, Heidi Amsinck’s latest radio story.

I thought Heidi’s last series of stories – Copenhagen Curios in 2015 – were her best radio work to date. But ‘Room Service’ – only a one-off tale, sadly – is every bit as strong. The world is familiar: the cobwebbed elegance of ‘Old Europe’, minimal daylight and that inherent creepiness which can make an oak-panelled room sinister simply because it’s an oak-panelled room. But with every outing, Heidi’s storytelling increasingly matches the elegance of her settings.

Tim McInnerny has read a number of Heidi’s previous stories and ‘Room Service’ was written specifically for him. Not only does he tell the tale with his usual class but he is better at being a Danish old lady than any actual Danish old lady.

Old ladies? Oh sorry, forgot to mention that earlier. Yes, there’s one of Heidi’s old ladies (albeit with a difference.) You have been warned.

Happy New Year.

‘Room Service’, a Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4, broadcasts on Friday, 6 January 2017 at 3.45 pm. Available thereafter for 30 days on BBC iPlayer.

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See also: Wonderful, Creepy Copenhagen: the stories of Heidi Amsinck

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photo credit: ccaviness <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/15767043@N00/2588334987″>Lobster Thermidor at Andre’s, Las Vegas</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a&gt; <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”>(license)</a>photo credit: ccaviness <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/15767043@N00/2588334987″>Lobster Thermidor at Andre’s, Las Vegas</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a&gt; <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”>(license)</a&gt;