Keith Waterhouse - Classic, or...?

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Somebody just recommended I read Billy Liar in the most emphatic terms imaginable. Is it all that? Apparently the importance of Waterhouse's work hasn't really weathered the slings and arrows of time too well. True?

― Ping Squawk, Thursday, 7 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

well, i recommended it to all my friends when i was a teenager and not a single one read it. so, can you please read it. please.

― maryann, Friday, 8 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm wondering about his other books too. Since I read him when I was a teenager I think I would have tried to look up other books by him and kind of remember them not being funny. But I just read on the net that he wrote a book called 'Billy Liar on the Moon.' Has anybody read that?

― maryann, Friday, 8 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

but perhaps i'm thinking of Allan Sillitoe. I remember always starting to read this book by him called 'lost flying boat' or something that I bought about ten times in library sales for a few cents.

― maryann, Friday, 8 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I would certainly recommend the book of Billy Liar. The film is one of my all time favourites and stars Tom Courtenay and Julie Christie and it's fantastic.

St Etienne sampled part of the dialogue on their So Tough album.

― mms, Friday, 8 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Billy Liar is fantastic. The last time I read it, I had an uncontrollable laughing fit on a plane.

― Dr. C, Friday, 8 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Billy Liar = CLASSIC! The book and the film. I am in love with Julie Christie in this film and this film alone. Fuck the milk off Billy, just get on the train with Julie and go to London for Chrissake!

Billy Liar on the Moon is okay I spose. Written in the seventies, it's more of a kneejerk against new-towns, council flats, socialist councils and other such evils. Funny in bits, but a bit too much of a middle-england polemic about the dangers of CHANGE (woo!). Billy older, not much wiser but a lot more boring.

― misterjones, Friday, 8 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Classic: Billy Liar, Budgie, Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell.

Dud: his Daily Mail country's-gone-to-pot columns.

― Terry Shannon, Friday, 8 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

After seeing Julie Christie in this film I though WOW! Every other film I've seen her in since has simply been a disappointment.

Man, I was willing him to get on the train but always knew he couldn't and wouldn't. I've often wondered if i would have got on the train or if I would suddenly feel the urge to buy milk too.

― mms, Friday, 8 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

mark, have you seen McCabe and Mrs Miller? Julie Christie and Warren Beatty in a v. downbeat, haunting western with a Leonard COhen soundtrack? She is totally ace in it. Not as good as in Billy Liar, but still great.

― misterjones, Friday, 8 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

KW's DM columns where he talks abt stoopid shop assistants named 'Sharon' and 'Tracey' are the laziest kind of 'will this do? I'm off down the pub' writing. However I couldn't do without his two style guides - 'Waterhouse on Newspaper Style' and 'English Our English'.

― Andrew L, Friday, 8 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Yeah, it has to be said that tho BL = classic, KW hisself is a smug, mc dud. Punch - ewwwww.....

― misterjones, Friday, 8 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

My friend used to live next door to Julie Christie in Newington Green. I understand she never gets the 73 bus though.

She's very good in quite odd Alan Rudolph film Afterglow, where she basically plays an older actress - but brings a real freshness. Still looks lovely.

― Pete, Friday, 8 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I wuv Billy Liar. The ending is of course almost unbearably classic though, for sheer emotional impact and crushing realisation of how antiquated and formal a society we were at the time and how near- impossible it was to break through that, it's topped by the last few minutes of "The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner". *That's* when I realise how lucky I was to be born when I was.

As others have said Waterhouse's Daily Mail columns = mega-dud, though he's far from their worst contributor.

― Robin Carmody, Friday, 8 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

without wanting to be TOO perverse, surely kw thinks billy does the RIGHT thing by not going off w.jc (as a couple they wd not have lasted less till the next station anyway)

it's dangerous mentalist (ie her = girl = SEX & SCARY) vs safe mentalist (ie nice billy who goes home to his daft family), and kw has EVAH AFTER backed the latter: julie = the change kw likes to think he yearns for but actually hates and fears...

― mark s, Friday, 8 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

one year passes...

I saw Billy Liar for the first time last night and I thought it was fantastic. Oddly enough I got JB Is Unwell and Billy Liar out of the library on the same day and didn't realise the connection until later. JBIU is great but there are some really weak gags in it alongside the greatness which I find weird.

― Sam (chirombo), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 12:53 (twenty-two years ago)

I was cackling like a loon at the "Lose yourself in London" bit and my goodwife had this great big smile on her face because she's always quoting that from St Etienne and she didn't know where it was from.

― Sam (chirombo), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 13:03 (twenty-two years ago)

Billy Liar, and Billy Liar On The Moon, both classic obv. KW himself total dud argh who cares?

mark s - haven't seen the film, but in the book surely billy does the wrong thing by staying at home? it's clear that he'll be miserable with his family (as proved by On The Moon) but he realises he wouldn't be any happier going to london with liz. book = v.depressing because billy realises he doesn't have the will/skill to escape his situation ie realises *he* is the problem not family/town etc...?

kw no doubt yearns/yearned for that change and his inability to force it = self-hatred = reactionary polemic. this doesn't mean he doesn't think that that change would be wonderful. book is about sadness of people who can't change themselves.

― pete b. (pete b.), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 13:28 (twenty-two years ago)

I remember the Billy Liar TV series from the mid 70s with Jeff Rawle playing Billy and was it George A Cooper playing his old man in an accent which was an absolute mockery of Geoffrey Boycott.

― Fred Nerk, Wednesday, 2 April 2003 21:07 (twenty-two years ago)

Does anyone remember a series of books and Children's ITV series about three Liliputians living in Victorian England? I vaguely remember it, and I'm pretty sure that KW was a co-writer of it. Can anyone confirm or deny?

― caitlin (caitlin), Thursday, 3 April 2003 11:57 (twenty-two years ago)

one year passes...

Keith Waterhouse is sort of my favourite writer, I think. How can you have a favourite writer? But I mean, if I was asked in a quiz, when I become really famous and everyone loves to look at my face, in that case, I would definitely say 'Keith Waterhouse'. Do you love to look at the faces of celebrities just because they're familiar? It can't be exactly that, because you don't love to look at the faces of the people you know ... or do you? It's true that new celebrities are irritating until you get used to them.

― m*ry*nn, Monday, 27 December 2004 06:47 (twenty years ago)

I just thought of a 'really funny' idea [copied from 'Fanny Peculiar, K.W.'s book of Punch columns], start a band called 'The Undergraduates' and have a song called 'Who Made God'. I think that's really funny, I thought of it because what I wrote above reminds me of what K.W. says undergraduates are like. Where do people get off, making you feel like an 'undergraduate'?

― m*ry*nn, Monday, 27 December 2004 06:50 (twenty years ago)

four years pass...

RIP time: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8238795.stm

― lacoste intolerant (suzy), Friday, 4 September 2009 16:32 (fifteen years ago)

Haven't grown out of love with Billy Liar yet. RIP.

― Alba, Friday, 4 September 2009 17:05 (fifteen years ago)

four years pass...

I wrote this. I haven't re-read it since I filed it so apologies if it's terrible

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jul/23/julie-christie-billy-liar-role-model

― Alba, Wednesday, 23 July 2014 09:25 (ten years ago)

"Maggie Muggins" seems to be out of print, but deserves to be rediscovered as a London classic. Imagine a character a bit like Liz, still in London in the early 80s, with things not having gone quite as planned.

― mahb, Wednesday, 23 July 2014 09:33 (ten years ago)

Just bought a second-hand copy for £2.80 from Amazon marketplace. Thanks for the tip.

― Alba, Wednesday, 23 July 2014 10:09 (ten years ago)

Ha - so have I (1p and £2.80 postage).

I wonder what Amazon's algorithms will make of this sudden flurry of Keith Waterhouse activity.

― Comfrey Mugwort (Bob Six), Wednesday, 23 July 2014 10:35 (ten years ago)

Remaining copies will probably cost £6320.72 and £6320.71 by the end of the day.

― Alba, Wednesday, 23 July 2014 10:37 (ten years ago)

I ordered a copy earlier too lol

― conrad, Wednesday, 23 July 2014 12:46 (ten years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.