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. Waterhouse continued to collaborate with Willis Hall over the next twenty-five years, writing numerous plays and television scripts, and also wrote plays on his own, including Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell, a major success when it opened in 1989 with Peter O’Toole in the starring role. He was also very well known for his writings on English language and usage and for his columns in the Daily Mirrorand Daily Mail.

He chose the Mail, over the pleas of every other national editor, when he left the Daily Mirror in 1986 after 35 years when the late Robert Maxwell took over. A consummate journalist, scintillating satirist and unrivalled chronicler of modern life and so much more. But while Billy and Holden are each confronted with their failures and choose to flee, their outcomes and trajectories are very different. Florence talks to the sideboard more than her own family, and is always drinking tea out of a pint pot.Undoubtedly, there may be other solutions for 1959 novel by Keith Waterhouse featuring the fictional country of Ambrosia. The long day is described in detail by Waterhouse, leaving no stone unturned to zoom in on all the aspects of his protagonist's character, lovingly highlighting all the flaws, follies and yearnings of this social misfit. Grouped with the Angry Young Men of British letters, who came to prominence in the late 50s and early 60s, Waterhouse's most famous creation is less angry with the status quo of post-war Britain than Arthur Seaton and Jimmy Porter, instead finding an escape from his frustrations by living in a dream world half of the time. Counties lose their names, trains lose their livery, ginger snaps lose their flavour and mint humbugs their sharp corners .

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. He amuses himself by saying random irrelevant things to his family members all the while keeping a bizarre running interior dialogue of the things he would like to say in response, and occasionally does. His humor is exhilarating, even when it is dark – maybe especially then – as exemplified by what he wants to put on his tombstone – ‘here lies Billy Fisher’ – in recognition of the lies he cannot help himself from spitting out repeatedly – these range from the serious, maintaining he has a job with the famous comedian Billy Boone and he is going to London, to the futile, pretending he has a dog, sister, even presenting The Witch aka Barbara, one of his three girlfriends, to the mother of his best friend and infuriating her by saying this is his sibling and the woman retorts that she knows Barbara and this lie is insulting.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. This marvellous little novel covers a momentous Saturday in the life of nineteen-year-old Billy Fisher in a small town in Yorkshire. His extended style book for the Daily Mirror, Waterhouse on Newspaper Style, [6] is regarded as a classic textbook for modern journalism. He left school at 14 and worked as a cobbler’s assistant and then an undertaker’s clerk before getting a job in 1950 as a junior reporter for the Yorkshire Evening Post. Billy Liar is very funny: funny in a wild and sardonic and high-spirited way without malice or cruelty.

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! 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. Woodbine Liz, Barbara The Witch and Miss Stradhaughton Rita are substitutes for one another, unbeknownst to any of them, for when two are not available, the third will do. First book from England that really reminded me of my family and taught me why my dad referred to my old parakeet Casper, as "Budgie.Billy is an interesting character, a lively storyteller with an unmistakably northern humour but like all the best comedy, the book's tragedy rings true with a much wider audience that still resonates today.