Keith Spencer Waterhouse CBE (6 February 1929 – 4 September 2009 [1]) was a British novelist and newspaper columnist and the writer of many television series. 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. 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. 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.

BILLY LIAR ON LOCATION - LEEDS, BRADFORD | Yorkshire Film Archive BILLY LIAR ON LOCATION - LEEDS, BRADFORD | Yorkshire Film Archive

The film is one of many made in Yorkshire (see the book Made In Yorkshire, which provides details and an excellent overview of these films, in References). John Schlesinger, seen directing in the film, later also made Yanks in nearby Keighley in 1978. Schlesinger won an Oscar for director of Midnight Cowboy in 1969, which also won best film.Tom Courtenay, who was born in Hull, featured in many films located in Yorkshire, including The Dresser, also partly filmed in Bradford at the Alhambra Theatre. This co-starred Albert Finney who had played the Tom Courtenay part, Billy Fisher, on stage, but turned down playing the part in the film. Having starred in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner the previous year, Billy Liar established Tom Courtenay, playing the lead character Billy Fisher, as a major actor. Filmed in 1962, this film captures a behind the scenes look at part of the making of the John Schlesinger film, Billy Liar (1963). This film gives an interesting look at the production of Billy Liar as portions of the Leeds and Bradford location shoots have been documented on this film.He fought long crusades to highlight what he perceived to be a decline in the standards of modern English; for example, he founded the Association for the Abolition of the Aberrant Apostrophe, whose members attempt to stem the tide of such solecisms as "potatoe's" and "pound's of apple's and orange's" in greengrocers' shops. [7] [8] 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. The title of the song " Twisterella" is also the title of a song that Billy co-writes in the novel. A British sitcom in 1973 and most improbably an American TV show starring Steve Guttenberg(!) as Billy followed, achieving nothing more than to help Keith Waterhouse accumulate wealth I'm sure. 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...

Billy Liar (1963) - Plot - IMDb Billy Liar (1963) - Plot - IMDb

October, 1962: The film opens with soldiers marching in a parade led by a brass band. The parade passes in front of Leeds Town Hall. A few tanks bring up the end of the parade, and actors dressed as dignitaries are standing on the steps of Town Hall watching the procession pass by. Various crew and film equipment can be seen, and director John Schlesinger uses a blow horn to give instructions to the surrounding extras. He also instructs the actors on the steps of the City Hall. Further crewmembers set up a camera on a tripod outside the Town Hall to capture the scene from a different angle. This distinguishes Billy Liar from another contemporary coming-of-age novel, The Catcher in the Rye. The latter is a frame story in which Holden Caulfield starts the novel in an institution (jail? Mental health facility?) from which he’s due to be discharged, and he reflects on events since the previous Christmas. But while Billy and Holden are each confronted with their failures and choose to flee, their outcomes and trajectories are very different. One suggests growth and maturation, the other suggests recidivism. Most of all I love the brilliantly realistic description of a northern working class family of the time, and it is riddled with those wonderfully colourful expressions that punctuated my own childhood, like:- Billy is also engaged to not one but two local young women, the sweet and virginal Barbara ( Helen Fraser) and the rough and ready Rita ( Gwendolyn Watts). Unbeknown to both women, they share an engagement ring. It is the freewheeling Liz ( Julie Christie) who has just recently returned from London however that Billy is truly in love with.

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Find sources: "Billy Liar"– news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( July 2021) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) 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. The film adaptation is very faithful to the book (although the endings are subtly different) so there were no real plot surprises. Billy Liar is one of those great literary persons I would like to have as a pub friend . He is a shirker of grandiose ability. He lays in bed every morning and has enumerated his mother's traditional calls up the stairs--the one that usually gets him to finally move is "Your boiled egg will be stone cold!" 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. 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.

Billy Liar - Wikipedia

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.

Billy dreams big - of becoming a famous scriptwriter, of leaving behind his drab existence and running away to London and of making it with the wonderful free spirit played by Julie Christie in the film. And, somehow, we know that none of it will happen.

Billy Liar - Penguin Books UK

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.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. In 2004, Total Film named Billy Liar the 12th in its list of the greatest British Films of all time. In 1999, the British Film Institute named Billy Liar number 76 in its list of the top 100 British films.