When approaching his 70s, Bewes took his one-man version of the life and career of Jerome K Jerome as an actor, On the Stage and Off, to the Edinburgh festival fringe, which was to become a favourite venue for him, and on a national tour, as well as devising a production of Three Men in a Boat, and in 2015 he gave an autobiographical show there, An Audience with Rodney Bewes... Who? His memoir in book form was A Likely Story (2005). How well do you remember Tom Courtenay and regional theatre? Why not test your knowledge in our quiz and share your score with friends? For all Courtenay's reticence, his passion for the character of Billy is still tangible. He took on the role at the age of 23, a young actor who had himself left Yorkshire to pursue his own dreams. "I'd seen Billy Liar more than once," he says. "I loved it. It was something I knew about. It was a graphic illustration of how we lived. Billy Liar was in every molecule of my body." Perkins, Eleanor (31 October 2019). "Fans of ITV's Liar to be kept waiting until 2020 for season 2". KentOnline . Retrieved 13 November 2019.

Crucially, Billy Liar's longevity is not an example of a tale that is told and told again with a dulling faithfulness; rather, the long life of Billy Liar is a story of reincarnation, of each new generation seizing upon the tale afresh and making the story its own. Its influence may be felt in half a century of creative endeavour, in drama and literature and film, and, perhaps most keenly, in popular music: referenced, for instance, in the video for the Oasis single The Importance of Being Idle, and in a song by the Decemberists, and popping up, too, in many of Morrissey's lyrics, including the Smiths' 1984 hit William, It Was Really Nothing.

Meechan, Lauren (17 October 2017). "Liar season 2: Joanne Froggatt and Ioan Gruffudd WILL return for another series". Express . Retrieved 17 October 2017.

Billy Liar". Reel Streets. Locations. Archived from the original on 20 June 2017 . Retrieved 24 November 2014. Guide to filming locations With his lyrics and vocal stylings echoing those of George Formby, Hoagy Carmichael and Noël Coward, and his penchant for brass band arrangements, Peter Skellern, who has died of cancer aged 69, sometimes seemed a man out of tune with the prevailing pop music trends of the 1970s and 80s. Nevertheless, after his breakthrough with the 1972 hit record You’re a Lady, he drew loyal audiences for his frequent radio and television appearances and his many tours with another witty singer and composer, Richard Stilgoe.

The house

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. Although the sitcom then ended, the popularity of the character has meant that he has reappeared in various guises. In 1977 Keith Waterhouse wrote a sequel to his novel entitled Billy Liar on the Moon. Then in 1979 an American television show was made entitled Billy starring Steve Guttenberg in the lead role. The stage play and musical have also continued to be re-staged at regular intervals up to the present day. Set in the fictional Yorkshire town of Stradhoughton, Billy Liar tells of a young undertaker's clerk named William "Billy" Fisher. Billy, still living at home with his parents, is bored with his small-town existence, and in an effort to bring a little colour to his life tells lies – from the trifling and relatively inconsequential (the goings-on in the mythical world of Ambrosia, for instance), to the overblown, compulsive whoppers (this rather loose grasp of the truth leads him to be simultaneously engaged to two women).