Billy Liar (Penguin Decades)

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Most of all I love the brilliantly realistic description of a northern working class family of the time, and it is riddled with those wonderfully colourful expressions that punctuated my own childhood, like:- His 1959 book Billy Liar was subsequently filmed by John Schlesinger with Tom Courtenay as Billy. It was nominated in six categories of the 1964 BAFTA awards, including Best Screenplay, and was nominated for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1963; in the early 1970s the sitcom Billy Liar based on the character was quite popular and ran to 25 episodes. Is it impossible for Billy to tell the truth, or is he merely a highly intelligent and imaginative youth, trapped in a conventional, working-class, North-of-England, why-you-reading-all-them-bloody-books-you-think-you’re-better-than-your-old-man type of upbringing? In 1999, the British Film Institute named Billy Liar number 76 in its list of the top 100 British films. But Billy doesn’t change: he remains destructively irresponsible, with a childlike immaturity that seems incapable of recognising the inescapable consequences of his actions. In the real world, liars get caught out; thieves get caught; two-timers get dumped. Far from growth, all we see is moral and psychological stagnation. He’s a disaster waiting to happen: he’ll end up in jail or in a psych ward.

In that rare occasion for literary novels (at least the few I’ve read!), the characterizations all come alive for me. I thought each character brings something unique and memorable to the table, even if Billy scornfully lumps everyone but himself into one conforming category. Which isn’t inaccurate but within conformity, each person can still carve a niche. Arthur, his best buddy, has it figured out, so did the sage dinosaur Councillor Duxbury, and the free-spirited Liz, and all the wonderfully-drawn lively characters of distinct personalities. They understand Billy more than he does himself as they watch him march in circles to the beat of his own drum rather than face the music. He’ll come around, that is the hope, but until then he’s still just going round and round and round with London no nearer today than yesterday. When Billy announces that he has been taking piano lessons for the last 6 months his family are impressed - apart from his, who doubts if Billy can play at all. While it is true that Billy has been going to a piano teacher all the time he never learned to actually play as during every 'lesson' he has been playing draughts with the old man hoping to be left a legacy when he dies. Things go terribly wrong when a piano is delivered to the house and his family urge him to play it. [5] Waterhouse had something of a turbulent childhood and eventful youth himself. He was born and brought up in an impoverished neighbourhood in Leeds and being not so economically privileged meant that he also had to suffer some of the same mediocrity that Billy Fisher sees around him everyday. Unlike Waterhouse, though, who eventually worked his way up the ranks and became a strident and popular journalist in Fleet Street and then a respected writer too, Fisher's escape feels too remote to be ever a reality. He is raring to flee to London where he, as he hopes, will find his footing as a writer for a stand-up comic and yet that ambition is never realised because he is still caught up, not on his lies but also inexorably to his humdrum home town itself. Billy is determined that he wants a pair of bright yellow trousers for Christmas. However, firstly he can't afford them and secondly his father is just as determined that Billy won't get such hideous attire. [4]If so, it could sit alongside his book Waterhouse on Newspaper Style – which originated as a stylebook for the Daily Mirror – as an indispensable text about the newspaper trade. Keith Waterhouse, who has died aged 80, always described himself as a lazy man, even though he produced a body of work that reduced his Fleet Street rivals to envious dismay. Apart from the novels, plays, film scripts, sitcoms and magazine articles that flowed unceasingly from his vintage Adler typewriter (he hated new technology), he also wrote a twice-weekly newspaper column, beginning in the Daily Mirror in 1970, and from 1988 for the Daily Mail, until the paper announced his retirement last May. Billy's plan is plain and simple - to take Barbara for a liquid lunch and then see her home and invite her to have a lie down on the sofa. However, things don't follow Billy's plan. [4] Billy also finds himself attracted to his former girlfriend Liz ( Julie Christie), who has just returned to town from Doncaster. Liz is a free spirit who, unlike anyone else in town, understands and accepts Billy's imagination. However, she has more courage and confidence than Billy, as shown by her willingness to leave her home town and enjoy new and different experiences. Under pressure, Billy ends up making dates with both Barbara and Rita to meet each one on the same night at the same local ballroom. There, the two girls discover the double engagement and begin fighting with each other. All of Billy's lies seem to catch up with him as it's announced publicly that he is moving to London to work with Danny Boon, and Billy's friend scolds him for lying to his mother. Find sources: "Keith Waterhouse"– news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( September 2009) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)

The play is set in one Saturday: Act 1 in the morning, Act 2 in the early evening, and Act 3 at night. Of course, like all lazy sods, what he wants to be is a scriptwriter. And this dream is, supposedly, on the verge of being fulfilled - comedian Danny Boon has written to Billy offering him a job down in London. Yeah, right. The other one's got bells on Billy! Billy has a new secret girlfriend - Alison - whose hobby is collecting engagement rings. The problem is Billy's ring is still on the finger of his fiancée, Barbara. [5] I thought I was the only one who did this. The interior secondary monologue for my own amusement, since when I manage to say out loud what I think is great fun and such an amazing observation--it turns out I am as alone as the little prince on his lonely planet. An American adaptation entitled Billy and starring Steve Guttenberg, Peggy Pope, and James Gallery aired briefly on CBS in 1979.Peter O'Toole, who played the lead role in Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell in its first West End run, said: "My friend for 50 years, the bugger wrote plays for me that were razor's edges he expected me to walk along as though they were three-lane highways. It was a privilege to have had a bash."

Waterhouse and I were once in the lounge of a Birmingham hotel, having earlier been in a Greek restaurant, where we had been co-opted onto the judging panel of a belly dancing contest. Waterhouse liked the belly dancers. He bought them a great deal of champagne, insisting that he pour it into their slippers. The ladies did not mind, even though their shoes were all open-toed. Keith Waterhouse was born in Hunslet, Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire, England. He performed two years of national service in the Royal Air Force.

Within months, Waterhouse came to the attention of Hugh Cudlipp, who, as editorial director, was at the zenith of his powers and about to take the Mirror's circulation to more than 5m. Cudlipp recognised his new recruit's potential instantly, and gleefully sent him ricochetting about the world. America, Europe, the Soviet Union: this was heady stuff for a lad who had once been banned from playing with the children of his more respectable neighbours because he was the dirtiest boy in the street. Married twice, Waterhouse had recently suffered ill health and had been cared for by his second ex-wife, Stella Bingham.

Keith Spencer Waterhouse CBE (6 February 1929 – 4 September 2009 [1]) was a British novelist and newspaper columnist and the writer of many television series. In the novel, the philosophy of Stradhoughton's stoic survivors is summed up by a pub singer: "Now I think that life is merry, / And I think that life is fun, / A short life and a happy one, / Is my rule number one, / I laugh when it is raining, / I laugh when it is fine, / You may think that I am foolish, / But laughter is my line …" Had he been asked to choose his own epitaph, I believe that he would have used the words of a writer he revered, Arnold Bennett. At the end of The Card, a character asks of the hero: "What great cause is he identified with? The reply was: "He's identified with the great cause of cheering us all up." When I first saw the film in 1961 I was also intrigued by the glimpse it offered of a strange new world - the North of England!Billy Fisher lives with his parents and his grandma – albeit the latter might expire at some early or later stage – and the relationship is more than conflictual, it seems to be an eternal fight – especially with his father, who has had enough of his son’s clever, patronizing attitude and threatens to have all his things and the nineteen year old man out – which the hero or antihero might like to see resolved by moving to London, where he claims to have a job as a script writer, when all he has is a an answer from the comedian who states that though he had liked his jokes and pays for material, he does not have a staff, just some people who work with him, presumably as free lancers and on a part time basis, or just get money for humor that the artist can use… Taylor, B. F. (2006). The British New Wave: A Certain Tendency?. Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0719069093. The film opened at the Warner Theatre in London's West End on 15 August 1963. [6] Awards and recognition [ edit ]