Keith Waterhouse

From Philosopedia

Keith Spencer Waterhouse (6 February 1929 - 4 September 2009)

Waterhouse, who was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, England, was the son of a father who sold fruits and vegetables from a cart. He attended Osmondthorpe Council School but did not graduate. At the time of his death at the age of 80, he had become a noted and respected English novelist, playwright, and columnist.

In 1951 Waterhouse married Joan Foster, and they had three children: Penelope, Sarah, and Robert. This and a second marriage ended in divorce.

According to William Grimes in his New York Times obituary (5 September 2009):

He left school at 14 and worked as an undertaker’s assistant, a newsboy, a rent collector and a clerk before doing compulsory service with the Royal Air Force.

After leaving the military, he was hired as a roving reporter for The Yorkshire Evening Post, where his dispatches from the Pennines won him a feature-writing job with The Daily Mirror in 1951. During a newspaper strike he wrote his first novel, There Is a Happy Land (1957), about life in a Leeds housing project, and in 1958 he quit journalism — temporarily, as it turned out — to write fiction full time, joining an emerging new breed of working-class writers like John Braine and Alan Sillitoe.

In Billy Liar Mr. Waterhouse drew on his own experiences working at a funeral parlor to create Billy Fisher, a teenage dreamer and frustrated comedian who enthralls unsuspecting listeners with his tall tales and, in his fantasy life, serves as prime minister of Ambrosia.

With his childhood friend Willis Hall, Mr. Waterhouse adapted the novel for stage and screen. The play, with Albert Finney as Billy, opened on the West End in 1960, and the film version, released in 1963 and directed by John Schlesinger, featured Tom Courtenay and Julie Christie in the starring roles.

Waterhouse was a columnist for London Daily Mail (1986-2009) and for The Daily Mirror (1970-86). He also wrote regularly for Punch. His extended style book for the Daily Mirror, Waterhouse On Newspaper Style is regarded as a classic textbook for modern journalism. This was followed by a pocket book on English usage intended for a wider audience entitled English Our English (And How To Sing It).

In 1991, he became a Commander of the British Empire. In 1994 he told The Guardian of London, "I was very influenced by Bennett and Priestley, who could turn their hands to anything. I never had any sort of program at all."

Waterhouse was the founder and life president of the Association for the Annihilation of the Aberrant Apostrophe (AAAA), a fictional organization that was dedicated to combating false plurals such as tomato's and road signs like BUSE'S ONLY and spellings such as "pound's of apple's and orange's." His last column (May 2009) for The Daily Mail, about the declining standards of English, was, "It's English as She Is Spoke Innit?"

In February 2004 Waterhouse was voted Britain's most admired contemporary columnist by the British Journalism Review.

Novels

There Is a Happy Land (1957)

Billy Liar (1959)

The Bucket Shop (1968)

Billy Liar on the Moon (1975)

Office Life (1978)

Maggie Muggins, or Spring in Earl's Court (1981)

In the Mood (1983)

Unsweet Charity (1992)

Soho (2001)

Palace Pier (2003)

Plays

Celebration (1961)

All Things Bright and Beautiful (1962)

They Called the Bastard Stephen (1964)

Whoops-a-Daisy (1968)

Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell (1989)

When he turned 80, Waterhouse told The Independent that he didn't fear death. "There's always tomorrow," he said. "At least there has been so far." Waterhouse died in his sleep in his London home.