Billy Liar

This 1960s tale of northern life has been turned into a film and musical.

'Billy Liar is a hilarious and sometimes painfully truthful insight into a northern family. Keith Waterhouse's seminal work about a working-class lad with dull surroundings but a fantastic imagination launched the careers of Albert Finney on stage and Tom Courtenay on screen' (Sam Yates, Director).

Billy Fisher is a 19 year-old nobody. He lives at home and has a dead-end job. He's going somewhere only in his imagination – which he's furnished with
an elaborate fantasy world, from which lie after lie spills forth. Yet while the Yorkshire lad harbours dreams of running away to London, Billy's plans are threatened by missing stationery and pocketed postage money, hoodwinked fiancees and, in the end, his own indecisiveness.

Keith Waterhouse's tale of northern life in 1960s Britain captures a country on the edge of seismic change. It is a place of possibility, where for the first
time young people could create a life different from that of their parents.