However, Billy tells everyone that Boon is very interested in his stories and that he will be moving to London very soon. This distinguishes Billy Liar from another contemporary coming-of-age novel, The Catcher in the Rye. He also wrote a long-running, straight-talking newspaper column for more than 50 years, starting at the Mirror before switching to the Daily Mail in 1986.

I've seen comparisons to The Catcher in the Rye and I would definitely agree with those only Waterhouse gives us a wonderful almost python-esque comedy at the same time making for a much more enjoyable and accessible read. He loved pubs and Soho drinking clubs, Gerry's in particular, but he dreaded bores, whom he savaged with a grumpy impatience. The film belongs to the British New Wave, inspired by both the earlier kitchen sink realism movement and the French New Wave. Keith Waterhouse's 1959 novel must have blown like a fresh and impertinent breeze through the staid conventions of British literature.Keith Waterhouse's Billy Liar was published in 1959, and captures brilliantly the claustrophobic atmosphere of a small town. Perhaps I became infected with this unmentionable N word when I decided to re-read this book that I doubt I have touched in over fifty years.

On one tragi-comic Saturday, as Billy plots his escape to a life of adventure and excitement in London, all his lies finally catch up with him, with hilarious and disastrous results. After fifty years of separation, Billy Liar now seems more significant that it did first time round. Like a tightrope acrobat, Billy walks back and forth a fine line between reality and fantasy, truths and untruths, but where one begins and the other ends depends on who is on the receiving end. A smash bestseller and one of the great comic novels of the 20th century, Billy Liar(1959) inspired an award-winning film, a play, a musical, a television series, and a sequel. The semi-comical story is about William Fisher, a working-class 19-year-old living with his parents in the fictional town of Stradhoughton in Yorkshire.A lot of the more ambivalent reviews of this book seem to stem from the reader's confusion about what they were getting into- "was it meant to be a hilarious knockabout comedy or a tragedy?

Waterhouse wrote the comic play, Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell (1989; Old Vic premiere, 1999), based on the louche life of London journalist Jeffrey Bernard. The film contrasts the children's innocent faith with the pragmatic and suspicious adults in the town. However, she has more courage and confidence than Billy, as shown by her willingness to leave her home town and enjoy new and different experiences.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.