Keith Waterhouse
The British comic author who wrote Billy Liar
Keith Waterhouse
1929–2009
When Keith Waterhouse lost the 10,000-word manuscript of his unfinished novel in a taxi, he called it “the best thing that ever happened to me” because what he’d written was “pretentious twaddle.” On his second try, Waterhouse wrote Billy Liar (1959), one of postwar England’s great comic novels, which became a successful play starring Albert Finney and a film directed by John Schlesinger. Its protagonist, a cheeky undertaker’s assistant who causes widespread embarrassment with his tall tales, was the sort of working-class antihero whom Waterhouse celebrated in a literary career that lasted more than 50 years.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Born in Leeds to a cleaning woman and “an alcoholic door-to-door vegetable salesman,” Waterhouse was inspired to drop out of school and become a writer by reading Mark Twain and P.G. Wodehouse, said the London Daily Telegraph. He was hired in 1952 at the London Daily Mirror; among his first assignments, he said, was to find a talking dog. Waterhouse got his own column in 1960; his topics included “his contempt for computers, his disbelief in statistics, and his obsession with the smallest, most ordinary things, such as the change in his pockets.” While producing reams of journalism, he also wrote dozens of mordantly funny books, film scripts, and teleplays. His novel Jubb (1963) was about a rent collector so despicable that the local Fascist Party rejects him; his stage comedy Say Who You Are (1965) concerned “adultery arranged by telephone.”
Waterhouse called himself “a tin roof tabernacle radical with a leaning towards political agnosticism and an economic realism amounting to studied gloom,” said the London Guardian. He “hated people telling him jokes,” treated bores “with a grumpy impatience,” and formed an organization called the Association for the Annihilation of the Aberrant Apostrophe to uphold correct punctuation. In Who’s Who, he listed his only recreation as “lunch,” and often said “that God had blessed him with the gift of the delayed hangover, one that kicked in only when he had done his day’s work.” He was divorced twice.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
-
Today's political cartoons - May 5, 2024
Cartoons Sunday's cartoons - annoying noises, gag orders, and more
By The Week US Published
-
5 highly educational cartoons about student protests
Cartoons Artists take on apolitical camping, the National Guard, and more
By The Week US Published
-
French schools and the scourge of teenage violence
Talking Point Gabriel Attal announces 'bold' intervention to tackle rise in violent incidents
By The Week UK Published
-
Benjamin Zephaniah: trailblazing writer who 'took poetry everywhere'
Why Everyone's Talking About Remembering the 'radical' wordsmith's 'wit and sense of mischief'
By The Week UK Published
-
Shane MacGowan: the unruly former punk with a literary soul
Why Everyone's Talking About The Pogues frontman died aged 65
By The Week UK Published
-
'Euphoria' star Angus Cloud dies at 25
Speed Read
By Catherine Garcia Published
-
Legendary jazz and pop singer Tony Bennett dies at 96
Speed Read
By Devika Rao Published
-
Martin Amis: literary wunderkind who ‘blazed like a rocket’
feature Famed author, essayist and screenwriter died this week aged 73
By The Week Staff Published
-
Gordon Lightfoot, Canadian folk legend, is dead at 84
Speed Read
By Peter Weber Published
-
Barry Humphries obituary: cerebral satirist who created Dame Edna Everage
feature Actor and comedian was best known as the monstrous Melbourne housewife and Sir Les Patterson
By The Week Staff Published
-
Mary Quant obituary: pioneering designer who created the 1960s look
feature One of the most influential fashion designers of the 20th century remembered as the mother of the miniskirt
By The Week Staff Published