Billy Liar (Penguin Decades)

Product Information

The cross media adaptations did start not or end there though, Keith Waterhouse originally adapted it in to a stageplay which starred a young Albert Finney (who turned down the lead in David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia to play Billy!), his success in the movie adaptation of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning helping to making Billy Liar an overnight hit in the West End. 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.

Soon after, he was appointed the Pennines walking correspondent for the Yorkshire Evening Post, where he is still remembered for his "flaming red unruly hair rising up from his head". 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. Billy Fisher lives with his parents and his grandma – albeit the latter might expire at some early or later stage – and the relationship is more than conflictual, it seems to be an eternal fight – especially with his father, who has had enough of his son’s clever, patronizing attitude and threatens to have all his things and the nineteen year old man out – which the hero or antihero might like to see resolved by moving to London, where he claims to have a job as a script writer, when all he has is a an answer from the comedian who states that though he had liked his jokes and pays for material, he does not have a staff, just some people who work with him, presumably as free lancers and on a part time basis, or just get money for humor that the artist can use… A funny and poignant look at a young dreamer in a provincial Yorkshire town at the beginning of the huge social upheaval that was the 1960s. Married twice, Waterhouse had recently suffered ill health and had been cared for by his second ex-wife, Stella Bingham.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." 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 an employee in an undertaker. He spends the first part of his Saturday morning at work, as everyone did in that era. He strolls around town, goes to the pub, meets a girlfriend or two and then comes down to earth. It’s a special day for Billy because he’s convinced himself that he is about to enter the big time as a comedy writer for a name in London. From start to finish, however, Billy is deluding himself. After National Service in the RAF, Waterhouse was encouraged by his mother to pursue his dream of writing for a living. a b "Keith Waterhouse: Leeds author and playwright dies". Yorkshire Evening Post . Retrieved 4 September 2009. Some have described Billy Liar as a coming-of-age novel. This is true in the sense that Billy certainly falls within the age group transitioning from teenage innocence to adult responsibility. However, it’s no Bildungsroman , which Wikipedia defines as “a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood (coming of age), in which character change is important.”Peter O'Toole, who played the lead role in Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell in its first West End run, said: "My friend for 50 years, the bugger wrote plays for me that were razor's edges he expected me to walk along as though they were three-lane highways. It was a privilege to have had a bash."

Billy nearly emerges into the real, adult world when he’s on the moors with Liz, but he can’t seem to take the next step from “OMG, she really understands me” to “I’m in trouble Liz: all my lies are catching up with me; I’m doomed.” Perhaps his retreat from that step is simply psychological self-preservation, since the reality of his situation could easily lead to despair and depression (for which those with NPD are at higher risk). We shouldn't forget that young males 18-25 have the highest suicide rate in many Western countries. Whistle Down The Wind - Andrew Lloyd Webber - The Guide to Musical Theatre". www.guidetomusicaltheatre.com. I first came across the name Billy Liar through the song of the same name recorded by The Decemberists in 2004, an upbeat piano driven pop song about a young man suffering from boredom, and it remains one of my favourite songs from the prolific band. His habitual embroidery of the truth, has left him tangled in a web of pointless lies. He has told:

Crossword clues of the day

Keenan, John (11 August 2009). "Fifty years on, Billy Liar has not grown old". The Guardian . Retrieved 4 November 2021. 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. In the late 1980s, Russell Labey and Richard Taylor adapted the film into a musical of the same name for the National Youth Music Theatre. [14]