Billy Liar (Penguin Decades)

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Billy Liar' became an instant hit following its first publication in 1959 and has been adapted into a play, a musical, a TV series and even a film. Billy Liar , Waterhouse’s second novel, catapulted him to fame and success. It became a BAFTA nominated film, directed by John Schlesinger and starring Tom Courtenay and Judy Christie. There was also a play with Albert Finney in the title role and, of course, a television series both here and in the US. When the musical opened in the West End, it starred Michael Crawford and Elaine Paige in her West End debut. But now, it is almost forgotten.

Keith Waterhouse’s hero, William Fisher, is truly lost. He works at an undertakers and is busy fiddling the stamp money. His love life is a mess and about to unravel still further. But tantalisingly, there might be light at the end of the tunnel. He has a ‘job offer’ to go to London become a comedy writer. The book straddles the day of decision – stay or go. Massimine told journalists he was born in Italy (truth, New Jersey). He told friends his birthday is in September (May). He told his wife, Maggie, that he was having an affair with Kim Kardashian (definitely untrue) and he invented awards to add to his CV. A friend described his behaviour as catching “a minnow and then it became a swordfish”. 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.The New World’s main representative in the film is Julie Christie’s character, Liz. She is carefree, spontaneous, and unrestricted by social or familial ties. Billy is easily intoxicated with her approach to life, her association with frequent travel, and especially with London. Liz represents the new spirit of 1960s Britain at its most dazzling – she has cut ties with her Northern roots, goes where she wants, and is polyamorous. She represents the elusive promises of the New World, in which one’s dreams and the freedom to pursue them are unfettered by such dreary notions as responsibility, duty, or monogamy. “Ambrosia,” the Battleground 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! In contrast, the New World is exciting, fresh, and uninhibited by the past. Returning to Adrian Hastings: Instead, he lied about their safe dispatch and kept the postage money. His aspiration is to become a comedy writer in the capital, a four-hour train journey away. “Are you really going to London,” asks one of his trio of girlfriends, “or just pretending?” As well as daydreaming the day away in his beloved Ambrosia, he spends most of his time thinking. Billy has two types of thinking: No.1 thinking which is deliberate, and controlled; and No.2 thinking which consists of obsessive speculation about all the what-if's of life, and to be avoided.

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. And there is enough of a cliffhanger to keep you wanting to know: will Billy go to London (and leave his troubles and his two-and-a-half fiancees behind) or will he stay to face the music? 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. The music video for the song " The Importance of Being Idle" by Oasis contains scenes based on scenes from Billy Liar, although most of it is based on the video for the Kinks' Dead End Street.

The house

Maggie Massimine says she is less angry now her husband’s addiction to fiction is recognised as an illness. Massimine himself appears ambivalent in recovery now his Pinocchio days have allegedly ended. “There was this wonderful character of me and he did things nobody else could do,” he says. “In some ways, I’m sad to see him go.” 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. Is it impossible for Billy to tell the truth, or is he merely a highly intelligent and imaginative youth, trapped in a conventional, working-class, North-of-England, why-you-reading-all-them-bloody-books-you-think-you’re-better-than-your-old-man type of upbringing?

the Poulson and Birmingham Corruption Trials were dominating the news at the time); there is also a dig at the Birminham One-Way Traffic system, when a marching band supposed to provide the high point to a procession is forced to detour round the town centre so that nobody sees it!

How unusual is Massimine’s allergy to the truth? Dr Curtis and Dr Hart drew on research conducted in 2010 to calculate how many Americans habitually lie. It showed 60% said they told no lies in the previous 24 hours. On average, people told 1.65 lies (half-truths?) in the previous 24 hours except for 5.3% of the population who just couldn’t stop. They told an average of 15 lies a day. Out of this group, the two doctors have put together a psychological profile, a pathology they want included in the DSMMM. This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sourcesin this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. 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.

Intriguingly there’s more to it than this, because William Fisher is also the greatest OCD hero in English fiction and maybe he needs resurrecting. He exhibits a range of classic tics. He tells us that he has to repeat the phrase da da da da da da over and again to get unwelcome thoughts out of his head. He tries to feel normal by counting, and that he can get as far as the number 3000 without even stopping. His tactic to get out of the counting loop is to insert strange numbers and odd phrases like the Lord is my Shepherd . 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.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. 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. He isn’t Billy Liar at all, he is a young man living with a mental illness. In the 50s it was an illness with no cure, and the primitive treatment there was tended to make matters worse. If you were poor, you had to sink or swim. 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] 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.