Billy Liar (Penguin Decades)

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The semi-comical story is about William Fisher, a working-class 19-year-old living with his parents in the fictional town of Stradhoughton in Yorkshire. Bored by his job as a lowly clerk for an undertaker, Billy spends his time indulging in fantasies and dreams of life in the big city as a comedy writer.

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. Waterhouse was of the mimetic school of writers, managing to capture the unique patter of his Yorkshire dialect and local turn of phrase without becoming exclusive or alienating those of us who aren't local or even reading 53 years after publication. It is this quality that stands Billy Liar head and shoulders above others of the time, it hasn't dated because at its heart there are no politics, young men still struggle with their identity and purpose in life and suffer from being misunderstood by those closest to them.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… As you can see there is a rather large and influential history behind this book and having finally gotten around to reading it I can see why. Despite taking place over just the one day this is still a coming of age tale, it brings us in to Billy's life as he becomes aware that he has to make changes and the events that transpire in that day are enough to help him work some things out in his mind, if not necessarily making those changes. I've seen comparisons to The Catcher in the Rye and I would definitely agree with those only Waterhouse gives us a wonderful almost python-esque comedy at the same time making for a much more enjoyable and accessible read. The play is set in one Saturday: Act 1 in the morning, Act 2 in the early evening, and Act 3 at night.

He was soon hired by the Daily Mail where, Waterhouse said, he was allowed to retain his treasured independence. Legend has it that the paper's sub-editors were not allowed to change a single word of his columns. William Fisher is an intriguing, complicated, sometimes likeable, but more often infuriating main character, who has a vast, phenomenal imagination, living for much of the time in the fictional Ambrosia, where he is the prime minister – but he does have other roles – and friends of his have important positions…this is a very useful, if not sine qua non artifice, given that the reality around him can be quite bleak – he indeed takes the machine gun he has in Ambrosia and uses it on the real humans that upset him, if only in his own mind…the gun does not exist – and besides, he does know this land does not exist outside his head, as opposed to the – let us say more than a billion at the very least – people who are convinced that Qanon is real, the world is led by lizards, pedophiles and that George Soros is the ultimate Satan…oh and Covid does not exist. 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. For all his personality issues, Billy is likeable (if endlessly frustrating) and very realistic; indeed, I found some disturbing echoes of my own youth when reading the novel. Waterhouse is also impeccable in his astute rendering of both the local characters and dialect, and the difficult social transition that regional England was going through at the time. There are some great comedy lines too – I have no doubt the Monty Python team took inspiration from this novel for some of their sketches, especially the Four Yorkshiremen sketch At Charles' birthday party Nan takes an extra piece of cake and lets slip it is "for Jesus". Charles says it is not Jesus, it is "just a fella."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.

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. 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". He manages to sabotage his engagement to Barbara (aka "The Witch") by borrowing her engagement ring, supposedly to take it to the jeweller's "to be adjusted", and giving it to his other girlfriend Rita! Oh, and then there's Liz as well... Then he got a call from an old friend from Leeds, Willis Hall, now a successful playwright. Together they wrote the screenplay of Billy Liar, filmed in 1963 with Tom Courtenay as Billy and making a star of Julie Christie. The story takes place in the course of a single Saturday in a northern city and is about a young clerk, Billy Fisher, whose daydreaming and hilarious lies have brought his work and love life to a point of crisis. On television, he helped to create the satirical news programme That Was The Week That Was, as well as writing Budgie and Worzel Gummidge.The film opened at the Warner Theatre in London's West End on 15 August 1963. [6] Awards and recognition [ edit ] I thus formulate a theory. I can't stop laughing with Latin American humor but simply couldn't get in the same happy mood when presented with the British variety. This must be because England is a much, much older country than those in the New World, or even those in Asia, which it helped discover and colonize. There's humor even in the act of death, which is pretty much the end of everything about a person. But laughter always looks favorably upon the young. A baby who gurgles and shows his toothless gums is always a jolly sight to see, but an old man who does the same thing is creepy.

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. Married twice, Waterhouse had recently suffered ill health and had been cared for by his second ex-wife, Stella Bingham. During these years, he was busy writing novels, plays and scripts, some with his friend Willis Hall.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.