Billy Liar (Penguin Decades)

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I don't have the foggiest idea of where to get a copy of this, but I am anxious to do so , frankly due to its co This terrific fearlessly funny book reflects the mind of a type of kid reluctantly becoming an adult. I am of this type. Billy Fisher is a dreamy, ironic, funny kid confronted with conformity and small minds in a small town in England circa 1953. It all seems so pointless to Billy that he greases his path and enlivens the journey by embellishing the truth, making things up, well if one wants to call it that, and many do, lying. After National Service in the RAF, Waterhouse was encouraged by his mother to pursue his dream of writing for a living. A funny and poignant look at a young dreamer in a provincial Yorkshire town at the beginning of the huge social upheaval that was the 1960s. Waterhouse's work brought him a Fellowship of the Royal Society of Literature and three awards for Columnist of the Year in 1970, 1973 and 1978. He was appointed a CBE in 1991.

On television, he helped to create the satirical news programme That Was The Week That Was, as well as writing Budgie and Worzel Gummidge. Some people may feel that "Billy Liar" is nothing but a comic diversion. How could a novel about a rather bumbling and ineffectual dreamer with a tendency to twist the truth be a mirror reflecting the issues and concerns of an entire generation? In my opinion, that is exactly what Keith Waterhouse managed to do here. A brilliant novel, in language fresh and sweet, with characters vivid and singular in an inventive and dynamic story. It teems, it bursts with originality.’ - Saturday ReviewWaterhouse 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.

Despite listing "lunch" as his only recreation in Who's Who, Waterhouse's output was staggering. As well as the columns, there was his novel and film Billy Liar, and Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell, the play based on the excuse for the non-appearance in print of an equally heroic luncher. He also wrote scores more novels and scripts, and speeches for politicians including Hugh Gaitskell and Harold Wilson. Billy aspires to get a more interesting job as a scriptwriter for comic Danny Boon ( Leslie Randall), but when Boon comes to town, he is not interested in Billy's overtures. However, Billy tells everyone that Boon is very interested in his stories and that he will be moving to London very soon. Whenever Billy experiences something unpleasant, such as his parents scolding him or his boss harassing him, he imagines himself to be somewhere else. His fantasies generally involve himself as a hero with everyone very pleased with him. However, Billy shows himself to be happier fantasizing about being a great success than actually taking a risk to make something of himself. Whistle Down The Wind - Andrew Lloyd Webber - The Guide to Musical Theatre". www.guidetomusicaltheatre.com. His final column appeared in May and was, like all his work, hammered out on an elderly typewriter. Entitled It's English as She Is Spoke Innit?, it was about a taskforce looking into education reform for seven to 11-year-olds. I have always loved this book and the film - and have even seen it on the stage as well. Strangely, it doesn’t seem to be as well known as I think it should be and I have by and large failed to get anybody else interested in the film. And, believe me, I have tried.Waterhouse married Joan Foster, the daughter of the undertaker he had worked for, in 1950, but they divorced in the mid-1960s. His son and one of his daughters survive him. His daughter Jo died in 2001 of a rare heart condition. His second wife was the journalist Stella Bingham, whom he married in 1984 and divorced in 1989, although she continued to look after him. All the while, he was churning out sometimes serious, often humorous newspaper columns - working every day on his trusted Adler typewriter. I had expected Billy Liar to have aged, perhaps grown stale now that its setting would no longer be ideologically either working class or Labour voting. But has anything changed? And if so, has it been for the better? Might it be that the community in which Billy lived had convinced itself of its status and indispensability only to have come down to earth with a bump when reality intervened? He and a workmate converse in what sounds like a double act. It’s supposed to be funny – and is. But before long, we are laughing at the two of them, not with them. It’s not original. Billy’s talent, it seems like that of everyone else, is mimicry, a cliched copying of what the mass media are feeding him.

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. Billy Fisher is a 19-year-old suffocating in a small fictional Yorkshire town and this book covers one day in his life. Billy works as an undertaker's clerk, is nagged by his mother and shouted at by his father, is engaged to two girls but is in love with a third and dreams of becoming a hit comedy writer. Feeling trapped by the monotony of his everyday life Billy frequently disappears into a world of daydreams and lies. Inevitably, Billy's compulsive lies begin to catch up with him. Later whilst scouring the film catalogue at film school I discovered the classic 1963 film directed by John Schlesinger and starring Tom Courtenay as Billy Fisher. A film which took the grim up north stereotypes that had become the norm in British New Wave cinema and turned them on their head with comedy and the careful use of surrealism.His father, who sold fruit and vegetables, died when he was four, leaving the family in the writer's own words, "ridiculously, almost unbelievably, poor". 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 nearly emerges into the real, adult world when he’s on the moors with Liz, but he can’t seem to take the next step from “OMG, she really understands me” to “I’m in trouble Liz: all my lies are catching up with me; I’m doomed.” Perhaps his retreat from that step is simply psychological self-preservation, since the reality of his situation could easily lead to despair and depression (for which those with NPD are at higher risk). We shouldn't forget that young males 18-25 have the highest suicide rate in many Western countries. Billy Fisher, the central character, is an intelligent, creative, educated, lower middle class 19 year old who is frustrated by his surroundings and dull clerical job at a local undertakers. His response is to retreat into Ambrosia, his private fantasy world, where he is a hero. He also responds by lying, indeed he's a pathological liar. His ludicrous deceptions result in some very amusing situations, but also in the melancholy that lies at the heart of the book. Billy dreams of moving to London, to work as a comic scriptwriter, and he has received some encouragement from an established comedian. As he works out how to make his move, his past catches up with him: multiple girlfriends, exasperated parents, his Gran, tiresome colleagues and some quite serious work misdemeanours.