As well as the scripts there was a growing list of novels, along with every conceivable award for his newspaper columns and his regular contributions to Punch. Although much of his work was comedy, like many professional humorists, Waterhouse hated people telling him jokes. He loved pubs and Soho drinking clubs, Gerry's in particular, but he dreaded bores, whom he savaged with a grumpy impatience. However, his first job was in the office of a combined estate agent and undertaker, which was later to provide the setting for his highly successful novel, play and film, Billy Liar. It has been a privilege for the last 23 years to have such a legendary writer as part of the Daily Mail story. He will be massively missed." 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. On Greece preparing for the Olympicss: "Watching the Greeks make even more of a dog's breakfast of it than we would comes as a tonic for the nation."

His targets included politicians, civil servants and shop assistants and the satirical machinations of Clogthorpe council. Waterhouse called the office a few days later, announcing airily that he had fulfilled his brief. "Where's the dog?" snarled the features editor. "Cardiff," answered Waterhouse. "That's no bloody good," came the reply. "The circulation drive is in the north-west. Find me a talking dog in Liverpool!"In 1999, the British Film Institute named Billy Liar number 76 in its list of the top 100 British films. 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. 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. As Billy's web of falsehoods begins to unravel, and more lies are required to fill the gaping holes in his chronicle, the more hilarious the novel becomes.

Whistle Down The Wind - Andrew Lloyd Webber - The Guide to Musical Theatre". www.guidetomusicaltheatre.com. 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. The phrase Fleet Street legend could have been invented for Keith. But he was much more than that, he was a chronicler and brilliant observer of late 20th Century life, whose characters became part of our national psyche," he wrote. 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.In 2005, the British Film Institute included it in its list of the 50 films that children should see by the age of 14. Billy Liar is the chronicle of one decisive day in the life of its protagonist Billy Fisher; capturing brilliantly the claustrophobic atmosphere of a small town in Yorkshire after the second world war, it describes a young fantasist with a job at a 'funeral furnisher' and a bedroom at his parents' – and longing for escape to the Good Life in London. The Mirror had become Cap'n Bob's paper and he didn't mind what you put in, so long as it was about him," Waterhouse later recalled. A long Saturday in the life of 19 year old Billy who skates perpetually on thin ice and today looks like finally he will fall right through. He lives in Stradhaughton in Yorkshire and the year is 1959. It’s a small town. He’s such an aggravating, annoying fool. His boss at the undertakers (a comedy job) asks him to post 200 Christmas calendars out, but he doesn’t do it so he still has them stashed under his bed months later. His boss also asks him to post out some invoices, but he doesn’t do it so he still has them stashed under his bed months later. His mother asks him…. Now this guy is not quadriplegic so I did not see what the problem was – why not just post them? This is not explained, he’s just an idiot. Also, he’s stringing two girls along and each thinks he’s engaged to them, leading to some why is she wearing my ring comedy. Also, he floats around town in daydreams about some imaginary kingdom where Billy is the king, this was very tiresome. Also, he brags to all and sundry that he’s landed a top job in London as a scriptwriter for a top comedian. All in all, if a 29 bus flattened young Billy as he was crossing Ironmonger Street you would not be all that sorry.

In contrast with the children's concerns about Jesus, their local vicar's concerns are earthly. After being interrupted by Kathy in his reading at a café of Gently At The Summit, her parish priest avoids all questions of Christ and turns the tables, accusing the world of stealing church property. Whistle Down the Wind is a 1961 British crime drama film directed by Bryan Forbes, adapted by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall from the 1958 novel of the same name by Mary Hayley Bell. The film stars her daughter Hayley Mills, who was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best British Actress for this film. [2] Billy is "just about thraiped wi' Stradhoughton" He tells everyone that he is off to London. But when he tries to resign from his job as an undertaker's clerk - a job he is dying to leave of course, there is a complication: the small matter of some calendars he was supposed to post nine months earlier. Like a lazy postmen hiding mail in his shed because he can't be bothered to do his rounds, Billy has stashed them all under his bed and embezzled the postage money. His hopeless attempts at getting rid of the calendars - by trying to flush them down the loo at work, for example - are comical. 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 sketchHis credits, many with lifelong friend and collaborator Willis Hall, include satires such as That Was The Week That Was, BBC-3 and The Frost Report during the 1960s; the book for the 1975 musical The Card; Budgie; Worzel Gummidge; and Andy Capp (an adaptation of the comic strip). Waterhouse left school at 15 with no formal qualifications but said: "I wanted to be a writer from before I could write. And all along, I think, I wanted to work in newspapers."

Keith Waterhouse, who has died aged 80, was one of Britain's most prolific authors, with more than 60 books, plays and television scripts to his credit. 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 connection to The Smiths. The film marked the breakthrough role of Julie Christie, who was nominated for a BAFTA award for her performance as Liz. The film was also nominated for another five BAFTAs. [7] 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. 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.In 1960, the novel's author, Keith Waterhouse, co-wrote a three-act stage version with Willis Hall. The action took place on a single set combining the living-room, hallway, and porch of the Fisher household. The first production opened in the West End of London with Albert Finney in the title role. It has since been produced all over the world, and has become a favourite with amateur groups. The play was adapted for the Irish stage as Liam Liar by Hugh Leonard in 1976. [2] This marvellous little novel covers a momentous Saturday in the life of nineteen-year-old Billy Fisher in a small town in Yorkshire. It’s 1959, and Billy’s lower-middleclass family wallows in the unchallenging comforts and conformity of dull, mediocre Stradhoughton. Everything is routine and predictable, which to the intelligent and creative Billy is unbearable, and he constantly retreats from the tedium into his inner fantasy world – Ambrosia – where he is a hero in the tradition of Thurber’s Walter Mitty. In the 1960s, after the appearance of Billy Liar, he was often classified as an "angry young man". This was not so. He had more in common with JB Priestley than John Braine. Like George Orwell, he had a deep love of England and the English, believing that our green and pleasant land was being traduced by a petty-minded army of bureaucrats. Politically, he was a romantic liberal. He was appointed CBE in 1991. 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". Kathy's father realises the connection to the missing criminal and the police are called in to apprehend the criminal. The father waits outside the barn with a shotgun.