Billy Fisher, the man himself. Congratulations, Billy.
We've just heard of your wonderful job in London writing
scripts. The comedian Danny Boo.
Congratulations and best of luck.
Hello and welcome to Goon Pod Film Club.
This week I'm welcoming Tim Worthington, writer, podcaster
and occasional broadcaster to talk about a proper British
classic, the 1963 John Schlesinger directed Billy Lier,
starring Tom Courtney, Julie Christie, Rodney Bewes, Leonard
Rossiter and others. Based on the best selling 1959
novel by Keith Waterhouse, Billy Lyer is an example of the
British New Wave, incorporating elements of the French New Wave
and British kitchen sink drama, but with a distinctive comic
heart. Anyway, have a listen to me and
Tim Thrape on about it and I hope you enjoy the show.
OK. So Tim, first thing I want to
say is thank you very much. Well, thank you for letting me
talk about one of my favorite films that I mean, I can't say
nobody ever lets me talk about it because I don't shut up about
it in real life. But there's very little
opportunity for talking anywhere in any sort of constructible,
meaningful sense about particularly comedy films in
this era. I don't know why that is, but it
just, it's not even that they're not taken seriously, they're
just not giving any regard at all.
This is a confession. This is the first time I've seen
Billy Lier. Really.
Off the back of you saying you'd like to come in and talk about
it. I, I was certainly aware of it,
obviously, but I think I, I had it in my head that it was going
to be much more maybe half fantasy sequences and half real
life if you like. We we do get sequences, which
are fantasy sequences, but there's only a handful of them
really, isn't there? Yes.
And as I will come back to, I think they might be the bit that
works the least well these days in it.
But you are right, it is in that it's very rooted in the real
world, but also it blurs the line between and I think people
really must understand it these days between what is reality and
what isn't, what is imagination, what is ambition, what is
reality? And what's other people telling
him, no, this is your reality. And I think that's why so many,
I'm going to be honest, it's mainly man who seems to identify
with this film, but so many do. It's such a totem.
It's like the way does that film about the sort of that sort of
high school heartbreak film in the 70s.
Jeremy, the Mark Kermo always talks about that seems to be,
you know, for Lovelone dreamers. And this is maybe more adored by
creatives, really, because from various angles they can see a
lot of themselves in Billy. Yeah, and it's kitchen sink
comedy Drama. Would you describe it as that?
I absolutely would, because I think that's a really important
thing about you would think it would be redolent to the way,
you know, people pine for the old days when you knew all your
neighbours and you could leave your grandmother unlocked and
the weak meal man came round every Thursday week.
But Strathalton, or is it Strathalton?
I don't know, because you see, they don't call it that in the
film. That's just the name for the
novel. And I like the fact that I've
never known what it is, but it's a horrible place full of
horrible people. They're bullies, they're told
people, they hold everyone else to their own standards.
There's no aspiration. There's hardly any likable
characters. And it opens with basically a
shot of slop clearance waiting to happen.
And post war ruble. You know, there's that
incredible tracking shot at the beginning when you've got that
Godfrey winners, the radio announcer.
And it is a just repellent place.
You don't even need to be told if you can see it, if you can
see what awfulness there is around.
And I'm not saying Billy isn't awful either, but you can just
see it. There's nothing you can't look
at. It rose into glasses now, and it
wasn't looking with rose into glasses then.
And I think that's really important.
I couldn't get over the right from the outset, the unrelenting
negativity of Billy's father, the actor Wilfred.
Was he an actor or comedian? Or would you call them both
Wilfred Pickles? He was sort of both.
I mean most people mainly known as Was he the host of a game
show? I think they're all caught the
same thing or like the post war game shows.
I can't say for 100% certain which one it was.
I'm sure I've got him a note somewhere, but.
Was that have a go? I think it's have a go I.
Think it's have a go, Yes, yeah. I mean, it could be take your
pick, but I don't think it is. But they were all three word
things that, you know, the the onus was on the contestant to do
everything. But but he in this I was I don't
know. It's there's this this coldness
between Billy's parents, particularly his father and
Billy. And, and I wrote on my notes
here because this word is used frequently, particularly when
Billy's father's talking to Billy or shouting at Billy.
The word grateful, right? Is that is, would you say that
the word grateful is one of the most patronizing words to apply
to the working classes? Because it's like Billy's dad
doesn't want him to get on. He wants them to hold down a
job, get married and not get any ideas above the station.
That's absolutely it. There's just the suspicion of
aspiration, ambition and people doing well.
Yeah, like a. Bloody Mary Anne, you want to be
grateful you've got a job in an office.
Grateful, grateful. Grateful for this.
Grateful for that. That's all I've ever heard.
Grateful you let me go to the grammar school, beginning that
once in the first day I went there.
Well, it's a chance where you know that, and don't we bloody
well know it. I've got to be grateful for me
on scholarship. Well, what do you say?
When I came running on to tell you I'd won it, then you'd have
to pay for the uniform and I have to be grateful.
And I'm supposed to be grateful to Sharak and stinking Duxbury
for the limits of one of the wrong stinking desks all day.
Well, you took the bloody job on.
So many people I know have got that in their background
somewhere that they were the one who didn't do what was sort of
expected, not necessarily by their parents of them, but you
know, by the why they're sort of environment they grew up in.
And Billy very much, you know, there's so much negativity
directed towards him from his parents, from his grandmother,
who I think it genuinely. And you get more of a sense of
this in the novel because the although the book mostly follows
the plot of the novel, it's not as in depth on the
characterisation, which is interesting because I think it's
because there is so much of that in the novel.
There just isn't room to do that on screen.
But she's a horrible woman, is vindictive, just messing with
people for no reason. I do think when she has her
seizure, it starts as a faking thing to interfere with things
and then it again, that's kind of ambiguous in the book, but I
do think it's. And then it says it's a real 1.
And you cannot blame Billy for considering all a bit
grandmother who cried wolf. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.
We, I'll just give a quick summary of the film because
there may be people listen to this that haven't, like me until
yesterday, hadn't haven't seen this film.
So you have Tom Courtney as Billy Fisher or William Fisher.
He was a grammar school boy, or had been a grammar school boy on
a scholarship, brought up in a working class household with, as
I said, quite cold parents and a kind of grandmother who's going
on about darkies. Should I say that or should I
bleep that out? I don't know.
I think it gives a sense of, you know, what her character is and
also the fact that Billy does not necessarily, well, he
doesn't call it out in the way, you know, somebody would have
done in the film 10 years later. It is quite obvious that he does
not like that kind of attitude. So, you know, I think quoting is
OK there because you are showing sort of the fact that he is
presented as unacceptable, a rotten things up by a rotten
character. Yeah, there's a clear sense of
detachment between him and the others in the household,
certainly at the beginning of the film.
So he's like, he's a, he's a dreamer, isn't he's got
aspirations to better himself. And but we found out later that
he, I guess he lacks the drive. He's doing a job as a, as a,
what is he? He's a clerk in a in a funeral.
Direction. Yeah, some kind of some kind of
records keeper slash General factotum, and one of his duties
to pay a speed delivering calendars is never quite clear
why. I'm not delivering it.
He's meant to post these calendars.
Yes, he doesn't deliver them. And he trials at the postage
money and, and then this opportunity arises for him to
start a new life away from his family, away from this horrible
environment that like you say, and, and, and escape from the
inevitable slide into a rut. And you said there's very few
likable characters in this. There's a small handful, but
there's one character that it's like she's, she's walked in from
a, it's almost like an alien in this environment.
And it's Liz, the character played by Julie Christie.
It's it's like she's, how would you describe her?
She's like a modern British woman of the 60s.
You'd almost imagine the the, the sort of woman you'd see
hanging around Carnaby St. Confident.
She's ambitious, she's independently minded and she
doesn't belong in this northern town.
Absolutely. And it's important to say Liz
was actually substantially changed between the novel, which
is 1959, and the film. And the reason for that is in
the novel she's a bit more like she's described as a scruffy
girl in need of a new dress. I think the idea is that, you
know, she's slightly lower social status to the rest of
them, but she's sort of implied to be a bit of a beatnik.
You know, she's falling that because that is what she can
afford to be. But through that, she's found
sort of, you know, liberation and got ideas, as they'd say.
She's fundamentally the same free spirit but from a different
angle. But apparently the reason why
she's so different in the film is that it's to do with
something I am very, very fond of, which is the BBC Art show
Monitor Ken Russell. One of the very earliest things
he did was a film for them called Pop Goes the Easel, which
is a profile of the pop artists with I think possibly the only
reals for central documentary footage of Pauline Boaty that
still exists. And it was after seeing that
basically, you know, we decided that's who Liz is and Pauline
actually did screen test for Billy Lyer, but didn't get the
role eventually. Topsy Jane was originally cast
as list and did actually do some filming who had a very brief
career. She was in things like she's in
the loneliest long distance runner, I think was her most
prominent thing She was in, I suppose.
But she had basically what I can only describe as a Sid Barrett
style breakdown. There's a, you know, complete
withdrawal from the world and her career never really
recovered. I believe she eventually just
retired from acting and you know, just did sort of I believe
she ended up working in a cafe as far as now, which is one of
those very mysterious sort of what if figures that you don't
seem to get in the 60s, but Julie Christie, basically, I've
been trying to work out the chronology of this and I can't
quite. But she was very much open like
Tom Courtney himself up and coming, but not there yet at
that point. And she'd been in ABBC sci-fi
show that I really love, even though very little exists of it
now, called A for Andromeda, where she basically played an AI
sort of human that was transmitted from the Andromeda
Galaxy. You know, they sort of run this
program and ended up with her. And the sort of, you know, the
World Cup was like, well, what is she?
What does she want? You know, it's very sort of Cold
War allegory sort of thing. You want to make something of
yourself. You know, if you want to
influence men. I do what I have to.
You can start by pushing your hair back.
Then we can see your face. It's a pretty face.
Oh, you could wear scent scent like she does.
Well, it's not very exotic lavender.
Water or something? But nice, I do not understand
you. Nice, nasty, good, bad.
There is no logical distinction. I do think because there was a
sequel called The Untrum of the Breakthrough, she was replaced
by Susan Hampshire in the Andromeda Breakthrough.
And I have wondered if, because it all seems to be very last
minute, because there are some shots where it appears to be
Julie Christie in some of the film sequences, if she was sort
of suddenly unable to do the Andromeda breakthrough because
of being off a Billy liar. I can't quite get enough detail
together to add that all up. But that in a broader sense I
have known been known to be wrong about these things.
But that does make sense to me. As I said about her being almost
like this alien in this environment, you see her
skipping down the street, like you say, there's all these
tenements being knocked down and you see all these sort of, I
mean, it's a black and white film, but you see these what I
would describe as rather grey people walking, you know,
walking down this High Street and you've got Julie Christie
there very carefree and turning heads.
And it's, you know, she's a very beautiful woman, but it's also
just her energy that's completely at odds in this
environment. One, one thing that jumped out
at me, I don't know why you see her briefly, I don't know, 2025
minutes in. And then she, she has a little
sequence where she's, she's being photographed with the
comedian. Is it Danny Boone?
Danny Boone, Yes. And that, that's precisely at
the 30 minute mark. OK, then you've got exactly
another 30 minutes. So the second act, if you like,
and then at the at the hour mark, she reappears, but she's
only in the film probably. She's only probably got about
10-12 minutes of screen time. But she's pivotal to the film.
I mean, she's the most second most important character after
Billy, isn't she? She is and she's one of only
three characters that I think are truly happy in Billy Ly.
But even then they are not happy because they are happy because
of something there is either lacking in their lives that
they've chosen to ignore because Liz wants escape but she doesn't
know what to. I think that's really because
she doesn't have a game plan. She just wants something
different. And also Mr. Chabrac Clayburn,
Leonard Brosseter, who we have got to come back to, is happy
but because he he is married to his job and it's the most
depressing, grim job we can imagine.
But the other one, who I have a weird sort of admiration for is
Stamp. Who's the?
Oh yeah. After Billy and Arthur, he's the
third Clark at Shadrack and Duxbury, and he is one of those
great charismatic office ball characters like Rex time in an
avid decreasing circles or Finchy in the office actually,
where they they're an emperor in their own little world, but they
don't have anything outside of that.
Not the tragical sad way. Literally that is, you know,
their entire life is being a character in work.
And in the book, Stamp even talks about stuff that happened
at work on nights out with women.
Well, he's, he's kind of an antagonist, doesn't he, As far
as Billy's concerned, because Billy's got this friendship with
Rodney Bewes, with Arthur Crabtree.
Is that the character? Yeah.
They've, they've kind of got a double act.
They go get, they go getting about, don't they?
But I think that's the fundamental sort of fulcrum of
why they don't quite work, because Billy is the one with
the sort of the imagination in a good sense.
And Arthur's much more grounded. He sees the things they do as
just, you know, that is their friendship.
Why would they be trying to write for a comedian?
Yeah, he's not the first that during his lot him, but he
doesn't have the aspiration with him.
Anyway, I've got something unpleasant to say.
It's why I'm Mr. Shadrach today. You've got something unpleasant
to say to. I'm Mr. Shadrach today.
Anything I say to Mr. Shadrach would be unpleasant.
Can you leave the undertakers? No, honestly, I'm giving him a
notice today. You are now.
I think it's indicative of the polarized times we live in,
where everything has to be one thing or the other.
But there's this idea that it's just about, it's a film about a
man who tells lies and that's that.
And it's so much more ambiguous and grey.
And to the extent that when I was checking up on things, I was
doing notes for this. I found a clip online of when in
the nightclub scene when the bands start playing the song
that Arthur and Billy had written.
And it was Twisterella. Twisterella Yeah, plenty more to
say about that in a minute. But it had the description on
YouTube basically saying Billy's lies about writing the song
catch up to him. Now, unless Arthur and the band
were in on the lie and unless Billy somehow knew what the
lyrics were going to be in time with the singer.
And you know that the MC that asks him to come up on stage
with the local lad who's written it, unless they're all in on
this lie being perpetuated, nobody in particular, somebody
has not understood this film, something that Billy has done in
conjunction with Arthur and it has worked.
It's not what his parents want him to do.
But that is, to me, that is proof that he is somebody who he
is confused ambition, aspiration and imagination and sort of his
trying to do a very upsetting twisted version of what do they
call it? You know, visualisation, you
know, like the Noel Evans cosmic ordering thing where if you
believe in something that aspire to it, you can make it happen.
And he thinks if he just thinks something, it'll happen.
I'll tell you what the one of the things that really jumped
out at me. So we've got Billy that lapses
into these fantasy daydreams where there's this fictional
what state country called ambrosia, of which he is
variously what the the leader of, you know, the the the the
greatest war hero of etcetera, etcetera.
But there's also these it happens number of times in the
film where if he's pissed off with someone, he imagines
himself machine gunning them down.
And I'm going to ask you this, Tim, because I've been trying.
I've been racking my brains trying to think where I've seen
that that done in a subsequent film or TV show.
And I just can't think where, you know, that's been stolen by
a by a later film maker and I'm. I'm even even thinking, is it
Lindsay Anderson with Malcolm McDowell in something like, Oh
lucky man. That's the person that came to
mind with me. I mean, I, I know what you mean.
I know I have seen it done in something.
Else. And whether or not it is sort of
directly inspired by this, I don't know.
I wouldn't be so sure of that. But there are sort of the kind
of an adoption of it in the monkey's head as well.
Oh, God, with the, you know, the juxtaposition, the intercutting
of the, you know, the Vietnam footage and so on.
Oh yeah. It's very similar, but yeah, I
couldn't say which Lindy Anderson film of the three Mick
Trappist ones, but it's definitely one of them.
But I think it's been done in numerous things, to be honest
with you. OK, but did we did it originate
with Billy Lyer the film version?
That I don't know, but what I would imagine is I'm surprised
that that got through. Well, they will call the British
board. The film centres at that point
who I believe on the original released.
The only cuts I asked for was to some of Liz's dialogue in the
scene in the park where, you know, where she said that thing
you wanted me to do that night. And I'm not clear on whether any
of that was subsequently put back in.
You know, even the phrase that thing you wanted me to do that
night might have been too much for them at that point.
But I'm quite astonished that, you know, as you say, open shots
of machine cunning elderly people, even if it's this
imagination, you know, was considered, I think it was an A
certificate. So you know, it wasn't even an X
so. Even the language, because I was
I'm no, I'm no expert on the British New Wave cinema.
OK, so I've got to rely on you here.
But at one point, Mona Washbourne says something like
Billy's pissed again. Yes, and there's a lot of
bloodies in it. So when you can say to the one
of the Mary White House's rare victories in the 60s was about
the amount of bloodies until deathless due part, I hope she
can go to see this. Well, someone says OK, it's not
a swear word, but someone in the in the towards the end of the
film in the in the railway station canteen, someone says
effing yes. Someone says bastard.
And it's John Schlesinger who's the director of this film.
The man behind the first X-rated film to win an Oscar is that
Midnight Cowboy of. Course, yes, Yeah.
Oh my God, how dreary. Then he's pissed again.
So glad you're going to London, you old loafer.
Simone and I were thinking of kicking you out of the old nest
any day now. Better come into the library and
we'll talk about the money and and keep your hands off my
bloody razor in future. Here's another question and and
you've, you know, the novel, of course I don't.
But is how old is Billy meant to be?
Is he meant to be 17 because it's mentioned?
It's not really clarified to be honest with you.
There's not even a reference to how long ago they left school or
I don't think it even states how long he's been at Shadrach and
Duxbury. I I think it's very probably
deliberately vague, but I do see him as being in his late teens.
But then again, he's already engaged to two girls.
Yes. If he's meant to be 17, I think
someone, I think his father or his mother at the beginning of
the film mentions 17. So if if we're if we're meant to
believe that that is the age he is, then OK.
Because Tom Courtney does not look 17.
But anyway. But he would be the prime age in
1963 to be not. Not so much writing scripts or
writing songs, but forming a band, you know?
Yeah, I, I wonder if that's a hangover from, you know what
they do. They do write a song, obviously,
but true. Yeah.
But if it's maybe the novel just predating, that's it because,
you know, what were they done in 1959?
Those tea chests with the string and the washboard, you know.
But maybe things just move too fast with the emergence of the
beat booms have really reflected that will be my guess to be
honest. Did you notice?
Because I've got this on DVD and I paused it one particular scene
for about 5-10 minutes and just it's, it was squinting at the
screen trying to make out the words.
Because there's a bit where Liz stops outside a record shop.
And did you clock the There's a poster on the window of top ten
EMI singles. Yes, there is.
Yeah. And I managed to make out about
5-6, seven of them. And I checked.
So you got Lovesick Blues by the recently late Frank Ifield.
So that was released in October 62.
And there's the next time, which is Cliff in the Shadows, which
was released. End of N62 baby Take a Bow by
Adam Faith up on the roof Sun Arise by Rolf Harris.
Unfortunately that was released October 62.
So this has got to be filmed around well very late 1962 and I
I did see a a, an interview on the one of the DVD extras with
Helen Fraser who plays Barbara. I think that's.
Yes, yeah. And she was talking about how
cold it was filming in the cemetery, that scene in the
cemetery because it was the middle of November.
So that would that would make sense.
So yeah. So it so The Beatles have just
released Love Me Too, but they certainly haven't really made an
impact yet, have they? No, they're, I mean that I'd,
I'd say, you know, things change so quickly, but you know, there
was there was a time where, and I'm sure you're going to get
letters about this, but for a spell, The Beatles were a very
big just another band, but they were just another band.
No one knew how long they'd last.
And during that time frame, Cliff and the Shadows, as you
mentioned, and Elvis was still bigger than them.
I think the scales didn't tip probably until some point in
1963. So we're still not quite in the
60s as people would recognise. And we're we're in hop goes the
easel era 60s. And yeah, maybe that's why this
has kind of slipped down the, I suppose kind of prominence
charter 60s cinema is that it doesn't fit very easily into,
you know, this nice, neat. It's the way things always
happen when people try to look at things in terms of a decade.
But it doesn't fit quite most people's vision of the 60s
because it's a world we we can recognise it now, but we've got
very little common with it. It doesn't really represent, you
know, really love or psychedelia.
It's very cynical. I'm very rejecting of something
seen as a, you know, a warm hearted golden age now, as I
said. And because of that it's it's
difficult to bracket it with other things.
I had a friend of both of us, Adam Leslie, on Goonpod recently
talking about A Shot in the Dark, which was filmed in late
63. And he pointed out that there's
a scene there in in that film with where there's a like a jazz
band playing in a, in a nudist colony.
OK, He said. If it'd been made just a year
later, it wouldn't be a jazz band, it would be a beat group.
Absolutely yes. In the 60s, twelve months could
change everything, couldn't it? 12 months was a long time in the
60s in terms of cultural change. Well, that sort of brings me on
to two other things that I think really set this apart.
As you know something for a bygone age is that it's a major
film made in black and white, which is still deep recur at
that point, but very shortly afterwards.
I'm hard pushed to think of films of a similar stature that
followed in the 60s that were made in black and white just as
a matter of course. You know this Georgie girl, the
idol, Morgan, the suitable case for treatment.
And then in the late 60s it becomes things on the fringe
like the committee, that very weird film with the Pink Floyd
soundtrack that was consciously made in black and white.
Lindsay Anderson the bits of if in black and white it becomes a
creative choice after about 196465.
And the other thing is it was made by Anglo amalgamated who
you look at even just the selective filmography on
Wikipedia. How do we churning out all these
successes like, you know, the first decade to carry on films.
Catch us if you can peeping Tom gongs go beat the Tommy Steele
story kind of loving poor cow darling mask of the bed.
I'm not going to go on and on. But the sort of workhouse
company that you got in those days.
It's just we make films, bam, it is made.
And you know, you look at how many they released a month and
now you got people crying that they've had to sell the utility
move or something because there's five months between
Marvel movies and that inconvenience is them apparently
somehow because there are too many.
But it I suppose, you know, cinema was still most people's
media of choice. I mean, my parents often talk of
how people will go four or five times a week to the cinema
regardless of what was on, regardless of whether they've
seen it before, just because it was all you had to do.
In those days. It wasn't even, there wasn't
even that much radio if you had the television, you know, in the
1st place. But you know, the radio still
had limited broadcasting hours. So cinema was where it's at.
And it is literally, it's a product of an industry that in a
sense no longer exists anymore. What's the I may have missed the
significance of this. You can put me right here, Tim.
What's the significance of Housewives Choice throughout
this film? I think it represents a very
ordinary institution on the radio that was, you know, in an
era when you were starting to get, well, things like the Goon
Show, but also, you know, smatterings of pop music on the
radio. Am I right about this?
In the Goons 1984 Is Housewives choice once the radio themes
that makes Nettie collapse in room 101.
Of 1985. Well, 1985, yes, I was thinking
in the original 1984 that inspired it because that's, you
know, the TV one, because I'm very much in line with Billy
Lyer. Yes, yes.
Absolutely. Yeah.
Well, I'm not sure about housewife's choice, but I'll
tell you what, I pretty sure have a go.
Was was one of the things. Yes, yes, it is.
But I I think that's I think that represents a world that's
anathema to everything Billy could achieve, because it's a
very Blanchard and it's not it's not the actual host.
They've got Godfrey Wayne, who was one of those odd figures who
you don't get any more like a simple Fletcher figure who acted
but wrote and broadcasted. He never quite knew what he did,
although apart from the fact he was confirmed for the he never
married type, which later baby laughed hysterically.
In fact, he had the dating advice column for teenagers in
TV Times very early on when he was already, you know, a bit too
old to be talking about some place to the young rock and
rollers. But yeah, I think that's it.
It's just it's something underpinning it that exemplifies
where Billy shouldn't be, where Liz shouldn't be, where Arthur
shouldn't be, really where Mr. Shadrach shouldn't be.
You know, it's I I don't want to sound like a being really down
on the lifestyle that was fine for most people, you know, when
they were perfectly happy. And but the the idea that it's
sort of pulling you back, you know, what is expected of you,
keeping you rooted where you are actually mentioning the radio
presenter voice overs in it. I guess I was going to talk
about Twisterella. Now there's a very odd sort of
it cannot be coincidence. All of these people must have
seen the same showing on the BBC in the very early 80s, about
6:30 on BBC 21 weeknight. But within months of each other
in the early 90s, you get that opening narration.
You know your niece Irina's written asking for your favorite
tune turns from the start of Weekender by flowered up your
niece. Irina's written to be ask you
for your. Favorite.
Tune and it's coming up now. It's also Ryde wrote a song
called Twister Ala, which interprets the lyrics from
Twister Ala, Even if it was about, you know, getting the
night bus home from all hours rave clubs in London, which is
not something Billy in his contemporaries really did.
But also St. Etienne, now there is debate
about whether it's at the end of Ave. or at the start of You're
In The Bad Way on the So Tough album.
It's sort of sits between the two and the actual track
Breakers between the two. I have my own feelings of that,
which I'll keep to myself. But that's got a Man Could Lose
himself in London. Mr. Shadrack, it's on that.
So it made obviously it connected with all these people
in the same way. Was London's big place.
It's a very big place, Mr. Shadrack.
A man can lose himself in London, lose himself, lose
himself, lose himself in the London.
I will also say around that tie, just as in The Sight, the Shame
and did Ebenezer Good, which has what we've mentioned already,
Mick Travis, Malcolm McDowell from Oh, Lucky Mountain, a great
philosopher once wrote. So yeah, they they've been
watching a different sort of films to the 60s season, I
think, but I think that's very significant.
Bob Standy is a big fan of this film.
Yes, yeah. As was Bowie.
Well, sorry, no Bowie. This was one of Bowie's 100 must
read books. Not the film, but obviously the
original book of Billy Liar. I'm not surprised because I can
see quite a few parallels between Billy and what I assume
the young Bowie must have been like.
He must have constantly been saying, I'm going to this, I'm
going to do that. I've got this great idea.
And people will probably often accuse him of making it up.
So he I'm sure he probably saw it as some kind of inspiration
because that's that's very interesting thing.
A couple of years ago I mentioned that I was watching it
on Twitter and I just replied to myself saying, Billy, just tell
everyone to fuck off. And it's interesting how many
people sort of replied in the affirmative.
Were there any interesting thoughts about it, including,
you know, it wasn't just people I know there were some name
accounts were replying to. I was really surprised by how
that took off. But I think it's you can relate
to that suspicion of ambition and aspiration in any sense of
doing things differently. I mean, I, I don't want to
direct yourself, but you know, I remember years, this is a long
time ago when I bought a domain name for the stuff I do.
And somebody in my university goblins real life said, I think
you should remember you've not won the Booker Prize.
And it wasn't meant as a joke. It's meant as a vice.
But you know, Billy is caught in a nasty, cynical place with a
spawn number of very loud people who don't think anyone should be
doing anything that doesn't have their own personal approval.
I mean, dare I say it, I think that's how we end up with things
like Brexit. But, you know, everything is
about them. Their insecurities, their lack
of ambition, their fear relieving their comfort zone and
the idea that, you know, I think we should all be calling all
that out more just generally, but well.
What's that? What's that line from?
This charming man jumped up Pantry boy.
Jumped up pantry boy who never knew his place, never knew his
place. It's that I would wager the same
sort of people found an enormous kinship with Morrissey before,
ironically, he became the very thing he used to rail against.
But I I think there's a lot to engage with in that.
And I think it particularly speaks to, I say this from a
mainly female family. I think certainly in those days,
girls, as in, you know, young girls and teenage girls, it
wasn't even that their dreams were, you know, scored by this,
got ignored. But if you were male, you could
quite often find yourself being told to know your place because,
you know, you'd read a book that wasn't considered, you know,
suitable reading matter for, you know, ordinary folks like us,
which is making me sound like a terrible advert.
It's not. But it's not the case at all.
It's just I do know some of those frustrations and I've, I
imagine ate whatever I was when I saw this.
That's why Billy struck such a chord with me.
But then again, there were some things that he did where I
thought, no, I'm not a board there.
I do like the character of Billy, but in some ways he's not
a very nice person, is he? Well, that sort of makes
something I was about to bring up come on a bit more
palaceable. Which is more than once what
I've mentioned seeing myself in Billy.
People have immediately replied with no your Liz, which is a bit
of a surprise to me. I'm quite happy that's how
people see. Me.
Although this is a long time ago and they won't give up too many
details, but I did once have a slightly suitable girlfriend and
a friend of mine said Mate, she even looks like Liz.
So his warning was it was a bit too Hitler's in one bunker.
But I, I, I'm glad that, you know, that's how I'm seeing if
that's how we're we're regarding Billy.
So you've. Yeah.
But Liz I. Think, I think he lashes out.
To be fair, I think it's because of people's treatment of him.
He messes with them, which isn't the right way to go about it,
but that's why he doesn't deliver the calendars and he
pockets the money. He's not doing it for his own
personal gain. He's dipping it because he's
sick. I mean, it's a sharp muck.
Is is that not also just laziness on his part?
I don't think it is because he seems quite efficient about
anything in his life that doesn't involve his job or his
parents, he writes to Danny Boone.
I wonder if Danny Boone, this television comedian who's quite
a hit in the town, isn't he? He's opening supermarkets and
everything. Wonder if he's based if that
character's based on anybody I've.
Often wondered that because he's he's in a very weird because he
seems to be somewhere between Mike and Burnie winters and that
was the week that was literally no, he's a no, He's a mixture of
them. He's positioned somewhere
between he seems to be a hit but the youngsters and you know, to
say that the bit dangerous and radical, but he also seems to be
quite happy to open supermarkets and do sort of, I'm sure, you
know, unfunny gags with the scissors.
I'm kissing a pretty girl. It's all happening.
Well, you've got a lot of relatives here this morning,
haven't you? Who's that?
Is that your auntie? Oh, no, it's my auntie.
Hello, darling. Still slimming?
It's all happening. No, thank you.
I'm trying to give them up. Oh, just a minute, Bella, before
you take it anymore. Could I have a pretty girl from
the audience to come up here and help me cut the tape?
Eh, any pretty girl. Oh, we have got a lot to choose.
From and we. Oh, what about you, darling?
Yeah, you and the brown. What?
Would you mind coming up here? That's a good girl.
Oh, round of applause. Very sporting girl, man.
See. Hey, what about a kiss to start
us off? Eh?
It's all. Happened.
It's worth saying. Actually, we could be giving the
impression that, you know, in common, to be fair with a lot of
media at the time that the view of women, you know, we might be
suggesting that it's not great. I think for the time, not just
this, but I think there's a lot of his grandmother accepted
sympathetic treatment of the female characters.
And his mother is the one who goes back the wrong way.
But she her intent is to reason with him and to get him to see
sense and straighten himself out.
She's not necessarily saying, don't, you know, don't write to
Danny Boone, don't do the stuff you do.
But she goes once I tell you the wrong way.
Now, his other two girlfriends, you know, on the one hand you've
got Barbara has basically already named their children
when I don't think they wouldn't hold hands in the cemetery.
And Rita is bent on a sort of hard, fast, hedonistic lifestyle
that Billy, I don't give her. But they are both messed around
by him more by his indolence than, you know, any malign
intent. I think he lets things happen
because that's easier. He just sort of not even goes
with the flow. He lets other people do their
thing and just sort of withdraws and creates mayhem just because
he doesn't engage with. Ironically, he's got engaged to
both of them, but he doesn't engage with them.
But they're hurt. That disappointment is properly
depicted. They are given their say.
Just thinking about this having been one time a, a teenage boy,
you know, 17/18/19 year old teenage boy, as I'm sure you
have been to in your time and, and being the father of a
currently 18 year old teenage boy.
I, I think it's quite accurate. The fact that, you know, Billy
will get himself into these situations and just think that
he can kind of brazen his way out of it.
Yeah, almost. If they'll go away if he.
Doesn't it'll go away? Yes.
Yeah. That's the most frustrating
thing about him in that, you know, in his aspiration is
aspirational. Nothing about his actual sort of
personal manner is, I don't think.
No. And do you know, just see if you
can guess who Barbara ends up with in the novel.
Oh, OK, Because we don't see, the last we see of Barbara, I
think in the film is her fighting with Rita at the dance
hall or the bingo hall or whatever, wherever it was.
So she ends up with oh OK, surely not Stamp.
He is consoled by Stamp and I quite like that really, because
in the sense they're a good fit for each other.
She'd be better off with Crabtree though, with Rodney
Bews. Well, in an ideal world, but you
know, we're not supposed to dream and aspire in Strathalton,
so. Can we talk about, we said
earlier hinted at it. Can we talk about Leonard
Rossiter in this? Yes, he's so good, even though
he's basically a more detached reality.
Bigsby, let's be frank, there is so much he must have based when
he was in the original stage play, but now on the box he
became rising damp where Bigsby was Rooksby.
He must have been channelling Shadrach, I'm sure.
He's semi sympathetic to Billy in this I I feel.
Do you agree? I do because I think he knows in
the sense of what it's like to be in this slightly detached
from reality world, because in his own way he is slightly
detached from reality. He isn't quite seeing the world.
He hasn't got a sense of the wider world outside his
business. He maybe sees Billy in, you
know, ironically there probably wasn't that much between them
age wise at the time, but I think he feels a bit fartherly
towards Billy so. Dad, Next up at home.
Oh, thank you. So you're thinking of leaving
us? Hey, is that it?
Well, I was thinking since this new opportunities succeeded in
obtaining a post with Mr. Danny Boone.
It's the comic, isn't it? A comedian.
Yeah. Yeah.
Very, very clever fellow. So that's your ambition, is it?
Script writing? Oh, yes, It's always has been.
You get a salary each week, then would you get paid by the job?
Right, Sir. Very, very difficult to say.
Now, you don't need me to tell you that.
It's very, very unprofessional a letter like this, is it?
Nobody wants to stand in your way, Fisher.
Don't think that. But it's felt you might have
gone about it in a more satisfactory manner.
We were hoping, you say. We were hoping you're trying it.
One or two things cleared up before you took a step like
this. Oh, yes.
Well, I realise it. See, there's those calendars to
be explained, for one thing. What calendars?
I think you know what calendars, my friend.
Oh, Oh, no, no, you see, there's been a bit of a
misunderstanding. No, no, it wasn't a
misunderstanding, Fisher. No, it's just that 2 or 300
calendars didn't get posted, to my knowledge.
We've got to get this cleared up.
You see, Fisher got to get it cleared up and implemented.
And there's this weird senior partner, I call him weird.
It's, it's, he's again, he's kind of seems removed from
everything Duxbury. Is it Councillor Duxbury?
And that scene where he meets Billy, I'm guessing it's kind of
like a quarry or Billy's off to try and get rid of the rest of
the calendars. And he has this conversation
with Council of Duxbury where they're talking in, they're kind
of talking in Northern, aren't they?
Yes. And at one point, Duxbury thinks
he's taking the piss. My interpretation of that,
again, I'd say it's a little more explicit in the novel, is
that Duxbury is also somebody who in his case, he thinks if he
talks to everyone involved in something in this sort of bluff,
northern way, then that will go away.
The problem about the calendars will go away.
You know, if I have a word with young Chabrac and a word with
you, you know, and a word with your mother, I think that's sort
of that's the parallel there. But I have always loved Billy
and Arthur's sort of riff about it.
You know, when I first came here I only had one shoe when I
arrived around in taxis because I've only got 1 shoe.
The the whole relationship with Billy and his father getting
back to his father as well. Is it quite as toxic in the
novel? I think it's even more so.
And there, there are a lot more bloodies in it as well.
Almost every word. I mean, I think we should save
this until we talk about the various iterations and revivals
of it. But it's surprising by the early
70s when they do the sitcom, how many bloodies there are and how
unshocking that would have been by then.
Just in that sure, what tenure years was it?
How much things? Changed.
Well, OK, the sitcom, I think I was vaguely aware that it
existed, but I've certainly never seen any episodes of the
sitcom. Is it Jeff?
Jeff Role. Jeff Role, yes, Yeah, it went on
for quite, in ITV sitcom terms, quite a while.
I mean, it's only on for two years, but they did about a
million episodes, right? It's very odd.
It's trying to shoe horn the whole concept of Billy Lyons.
Does some think it's not? You know, because this film
could not be further removed from a cosy sort of 7:00 PM
sitcom if it tried. Jeff Rose, really good, but he
doesn't feel like Billy. But George Cooper, who I think
could play this dad on stage. Oh, I can see that.
And he's so good and again he says bloody.
A lot of the time Barbara's in it, but there's no reader or
list, which throws the balance off a bit.
You can't see any real reason why about something different.
As you know, everyone's mostly like him and like her.
There's a Peter Scallon theme song, which is a bit novelty.
It's, I would call it the not especially strange world of
Gurney Slade because it doesn't quite let.
I mean, when they made this film, they must have seen
Anthony Newley in the Strange World, the Gurney Slade, because
there's a there's a lot of it in there.
But I do think, as I said, the bits set in Ambrosia, the bits
don't really work now because it's not got even the sort of
Richard Lester style to it. It just looks like a standard
cutaway where they've got slightly sort of Eastern
European military key from, you know, nothing really sort of
takes off about it. And they must have looked fine
at the time. But I think it doesn't quite
provide enough, you know, odd cutaways, machine guns aside,
enough of a difference to the main action.
And you don't get any of that in the sitcom, incidentally.
Right. OK.
I was thinking because we covered Kind Hearts and Coronets
last month on this where obviously Guinness plays 8
characters, 8-9 characters. And I'm not saying Tom Courtney
plays 8 or 9 characters, but he kind of does.
Yes. Yeah.
Well, he plays different characters within Billy, I
think. Yeah.
And I think that's partly why the sitcom doesn't really work,
because it just isn't the room to do that.
I mean, you know, it's fine. I don't mind it.
And it's much better, I've got to say, to my impression of the
stage musical. Are you aware of that?
No. 1974. Right.
Now a stay fashion of Billy Lier, but songs by John Barry
and Don Black should be right up my street.
But first of all, Billy dreams of being the next Fred Astor.
Right. And I'm going to give you one
guess who played him. OK, up and coming.
No, no, somebody who was big at the time and you might hear a
bit of venom and contempt in my voice.
I do not like this performer at all.
Oh God. I don't like a sitcom.
That might give you a clue. Bloody hell.
No Michael Crawford. Oh.
God, the least Billy like person you can imagine.
Probably boy Castle took over later in the run, which we're a
bit more interested in, but even not it still makes me think of
it being a bit like All Star record Breakers.
You know dedication is what you need if you want to be a
calendar stealing Barber engaging Danny Boone gag writing
record breaker. But I'm there was.
Do you know about the American sitcom as well?
I do. Well, yes, because I saw, I saw
a photograph. I was doing research for this.
I saw a photograph of Lou Ferrigno as the Incredible Hulk
in an episode of the Billy Lier American sitcom with Steve
Guttenberg. Steve Guttenberg, I've not seen
that. I really want to see it,
obviously because of my love of all things Marvel Comics.
It's just none of it makes sense to me.
I'm. Guessing that there must have
been dream or fantasy sequences in that and that's how the.
Whole oh that that must have been surely but but really, I
mean, you know, I love the novel.
I love the film, but nothing no subsequent attempts have quite
worked. I mean there was the the only
official sequel has been the novel Billy Lier on the moon,
which everyone forgets about me. It's all right, but it's really,
you know, that's 1975. It's a harsher novel for a
harsher world and Billy isn't where people would have wanted
him to be. I'd I'd say a good analogy would
be if the first novel was the likely lads.
This is whatever happened to you know, it's a complete tonal
shift and to be fair, it couples some interesting themes, as
we've already mentioned it, as mentioned, the source of the
Mary Whitehouse mindset, you know, the clean up TV
campaigning and there's a lot about, you know, sort of exposed
corruption that was round the business and politics in the
70s, but it I don't think anyone would argue it was asked good.
We should mention as well, because we've not.
I don't think we've mentioned him at all.
Keith Waterhouse, of course, wrote the novel of Billy.
Laws, yeah. And then he and Willis Hall
wrote or adapted it for the film and and would go on.
And I and I recognise their names of course, but I as a
child I grew up watching Worzel Gummidge, which of course they
adapted for television. Yes, they did.
And obviously they worked on a lot of late night SATA shows.
They created Budgie Without New Faith as well, which really is
probably how Billy Lier should have been known on television,
you know, in that sort of longer form, comedy, drama form.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that would have worked.
But the amount of stuff that they wrote between them, you
know, everything from Whistle Down the Wind to episodes of
Minder Perfect Scoundrels, Of course, Return of the Antelope
to. What?
Return. Do you know their return of the
antelope? No.
It was a mid 80s ITV Sunday afternoon children's drama about
the Lilliputians accidentally sailed back to and they say,
Edwardian England, but James Galway, the man with the Golden
Flute did the theme and it it went on forever.
It really did, but I've. Never heard of that, and I'm
sure you've probably covered it previously on looks unfamiliar
or. Something No, I haven't.
I've not let anyone pick up because it just reminds me of
very dull Sunday afternoons. But.
My God. Well, yeah.
Talk about versatile writing, though.
Well, I know that Waterhouse wrote Jeffrey.
Jeffrey Bernard is unwell. Yeah, Jeffrey Bernard is unwell.
Absolute. Yeah.
That's such a, a gear change, isn't it?
Yeah, something like Return of the Antelope, I guess.
And they wrote. A good look at Torn.
Curtin for Hitchcock as well, I believe.
Yes, yeah. And if you look at John
Schlesinger's credits, you know he does a couple of similar
things. This like a kind of loving and
darling, but later Midnight Cowboy, Marathon marathon, the
Vulcan and the Snowman. And and two absolute cracking
Alan Bennett TV adaptations. What do you call them?
Sort of Cambridge spy related an Englishman abroad with who was
who was that? It was Alan Bates's Guy Burgess
meeting Coral Brown in Moscow. And then a question of
attribution was brilliant. Yeah.
With James Fox as Anthony Blunt and Prunella Scales as the
Queen. And remember there was eyebrows
raised of the depiction of there being a depiction of the Queen
on television in 1991. Do you remember that?
I do, yes. Again, how times you know change
because you can't move the depictions of the Queen now.
No portrait painters tender regard faces is not very still
lives. There was one eminent portrait
painter who said that he wished he could hang his suit upside
down by the leg like a dead hair.
Yes, well, one Minister of Arts wanted to lose Francis Bacon on
me, and that's probably how I would have ended up.
He did the screaming Pope, didn't he?
I suppose one would have been the Screaming Queen.
Again, it's this carefree nature of Liz that she just decides.
She just convinces Billy to just leave, leave and, and, and go
down to London and follow his dreams.
And he, we get the feeling that he he's he's, he's on board with
it, with the idea right until the very end.
And then he essentially he chickens out.
It's unlike the ambiguity of it. It isn't explained why he
doesn't go because I think it's he cannot let go of feeling he
has responsibilities to people that he doesn't really.
And if you look at everything Liz says, it makes absolute
sense. I mean, she does say rationale
is, I mean, this is a conflation of the film script and the book
script. But it's, it's this town, it's
the people. I don't like knowing everybody
becoming a part of things. I'd like to move around without
having to explain anything, which, you know, is a very
relatable thing. But when she says you just buy a
ticket and get on the train, that's all you have to do.
And I, I think it's that Liz sees his potential but knows
that, you know, she doesn't want a project.
She wants him to realise who he is and he doesn't.
And that's why he doesn't go well there.
He is frightened to step outside.
You know what? In a sense it's not comfortable
because some things are going to come back to bite him.
But he's got a solid background where he is a dreamer and he
doesn't have to make it reality. Although I will say Liz's
expression breaks my heart, which is easy still on the
platform. Well, he's in his comfort zone
where he is, isn't he? He knows where he is, where
he's, he hasn't got a job to go to.
He's told Liz that he's going to be writing for Danny Boone when
in reality he isn't. And, and it's also when they get
on the, when they board the train and you get these, I
guess, what are they, jazz musicians that get on after
them? And he looks extremely
uncomfortable. Is it just because he realizes
he is not of that world? That he feels intimidated by it
maybe, but I think the key line, which is from the novel, but
it's. I turn over and you leave every
day, but the blocks show through.
He cannot escape what is expected of him and it makes me
think of. I remember reading Brett
Anderson Swaid's autobiography again, although Suede never
sampled Billy Lier. But he talked about how he would
stand as a teenager just on the platform at the local train
station, staring down the line and trying to see London at the
end of it. And he's somebody who affected
that escape. But Billy is no Brit Anderson.
That's interesting. In many ways.
No, he's not. But again, we get back to the
Bowie. Sort of, yes, yes.
I suppose just to bring myself into this because it's, it's
just occurred to me because from from and the earliest age I can
remember, I remember being in Infant School and there being a
conversation. I don't know why the
conversation came up, but somebody said what do you want
to do when you grow up? Which is a bit of a cliche I
suppose. But 5 year old, 6 year old me, I
remember clearly saying I want to go and live in London, right.
And it's because I was, I was obsessed that I always had been,
even at a young age with everything British, British
comics. I was reading Wizard and Chips
and you know, Buster and Beano and all that.
And I was watching obsessed with British television because we've
got a lot of it. When I was a kid, my late mum
was very into, she was, you know, she was a big royalist.
And that was kind of instilled into me at an early age.
Not that I am a royalist now as such, but I, I had this kind of
romantic idea of England, you know, and, and then, you know,
Fast forward 10 years or so and, and I had the opportunity to
leave this very provincial, very small town environment that I
did find quite, quite a bit like Liz quite stifling.
Everyone knew everyone else's business, you know, and I think
subconsciously as a, as a, as a 1516 year old teenage boy in
that environment, having grown up there, I just wanted to get
out. I needed to leave.
And I, and I, and I got this, this opportunity that very, very
few people would have got. I had this opportunity to
actually leave and, and travel to the other, other side of the
world and travel and live with my uncle and aunt in Northern
Ireland. OK, not, it wasn't exactly
England, but it was still, you know, almost the same.
And I never looked back. You know, my eyes were opened
when I left my, my little town. And I've, you know, I've, I've
been back there on a number of occasions, but I always, I
always feel I don't belong here. And I guess, you know, it's a
very rambling way of saying I'm in that way.
I'm a little bit like Liz, I suppose.
Well, I can equate that to my equivalent would, I suppose, be
that when I was in my mid teens, I started to write.
I use obsessively in, you know, the old fashioned sense, you
know, fervently not, you know, it's going to sound like
stalking now, but with people in, you know, we're writing for
the enemy or doing things on radio for whatever.
It seemed to chime with how I felt and what I thought was
interesting. So, you know, that'd be people
like Armando Iannucci, Chris Morris, Catelyn Moran, David
Kwantic. Ironically, you know, a lot of
them are now people I now know. And you know, one or two of them
might even consider me, you know, I don't want to say that
might consider me a consent. That sounds incredibly vain of
me, but you know what I mean. I have it the same world as some
of them. And that, you know, I remember
people being really at the time sort of why are you writing to
this Richard Herring bloke, which but that was my sort of my
world is over there, how do I get to it?
And I remember I've never forgotten this.
You know, people give advice and so on, but Andrew Collins once
sent me a quite lengthy letter where I think he just sensed in
letters he was writing that this was what I was looking for about
just explaining how, you know, he got where he was by a mixture
of hard work, I'm telling, but luck as well and using luck when
it came up. And I've never forgotten some of
the advice he gave me and that and, you know, I cannot thank
him enough for that. But that's, you know, that's the
same thing. That's my writing to Danny
Boone, except I actually had some kind of direction in it.
And I have sort of ended up, I mean, that that makes me think,
what do you make of I'm aware the stuff we haven't covered
yet, but of the fact the last scene is barely walking away.
Sort of the the ending of the book's different, by the way.
But I'm not going to say anything about that because I'm
hoping people come away from this and read the novel.
But it's the barely sort of walking away, conducting an
imaginary orchestra, I suppose, an ambrosia.
And it doesn't tell me with I think people are hoping that,
you know, to use another in a way quite similar film, but from
much later Quadrophenia, where, you know, very interesting thing
came out about later. But you know, you watch out.
It's ambiguous. Has Jimmy jumped off the Cliff
or he's just thrown his bike off the Cliff?
And most people are hoping that, you know, because he's, he's got
so much more sense than everyone around him that he might
straighten his life out. And then it was only when it
came out on DVD that Frank Rotham, the director of this
commentary, pointed out that it opened with a shot of a very
determined looking Jimmy walking away from the Cliff edge with
real purpose in his eyes. And he said it was always in
there. It's just nobody ever realised
that's what that was. But I think people, maybe that's
why Billy Lier on the Moon doesn't really work and people
are not keen on it because Billy hasn't.
He's betrayed your imagination of what he might be able to do
in a way. But the last shot of the film
does sort of indicate that he can't do that, that he can't
find that resolve. Well, he's not.
He's not walking home from the train station Blumley.
No, true. He's he, he rather, he seems
kind of relieved, doesn't he? And he is relieved when he's.
So he jumps off the train to get some milk from a from a.
When did you last see a milk vending machine?
Possibly. Maybe so in about 1981 I think.
But he deliberately waits. He wants her to think he's
missed the train by accident. But obviously it's all
deliberate and Liz is made for swinging London.
He's not. It's interesting as well.
I noticed something that the film critic Alexander Walker
wrote. He said with Julie Christie, the
British cinema caught the train South.
I think there's a lot of truth in that.
Actually, I think this is almost like Doorway.
It's not a line drawn under, you know, kitchen sink drama and
cinema how it used to be. And you know, as I mentioned,
the Anglo amalgamated churning out a film every 2 1/2 minutes
or whatever. Well, but it's like a portal
between the two because it does end, you know, Swinging London
invades it basically. And it's, you know, Billy
doesn't go but but again, that's quite an important thing is that
he doesn't help, you know, any situation that he's in.
But it's mainly down to other people's, you know, it.
It's his an activity and his lack of responses, the ability
to stand up to people that allow situations to sort of develop
and worsen. But while things are his
responsibility and not his actual fault because it's what
the people impose on him quite often, sort of offloading their
own hang ups and emotional burdens that they won't deal
with themselves by transplancing them on to him.
I mean, you know, yes, he has technically stolen the
calendars, but Shadrach is a vain idiot who is only concerned
with running his business well. Rita and Barbara he treats badly
but they have both been sold a lie in events.
Comments about, you know, the only thing that they can aspire
to in life are the two different lifestyles they seem to have,
you know, uptight church going, you know, married to young wife
or, you know, blousey barmaids raising hell everywhere.
Well, and then then Liz is a is 1/3 type.
It just shows that Billy doesn't have a type.
No, not at all. They all look completely
different. Yeah, yeah.
Again, it's the interesting positioning of this film before
the 60s really happened. If you're looking for something
new, would you have been better off in the world of That was the
Week that was and The Yardbirds were, you know, were, and then,
of course, you know, The Beatles going weird as the decade went
on. What that suited him better?
Was he destined just to be provincial all his life?
Well, you see, I like that question mark, like that
ambiguity, which, you know, Billy Lier on the moon doesn't
really help with. And, you know, a musical where
he wants to be the next Fred Astaire certainly does not help.
Sometimes it is, you know, best to just leave things where they
are. Yeah.
There are questions that don't need to be answered.
You know, like, I still maintain Smile by The Beach Boys was more
interesting when we didn't know how it fitted together.
I'm not saying it made pretty easy listening experience, but
the fact that, you know, it was literally almost as though this
album being dropped on the floor and smashed.
And there were these little cues and like what?
What did any of them have? How were they related to each
other? And you know the tiny bits that
sneaked out officially, sometimes as part of other
songs. And sometimes these questions
don't necessarily need to be answered.
Well, didn't the Brian Wilson did.
He did put out. Yes.
Well, he he did. And then the actual Beach Boys
version came out fully put together and it was interesting.
But again, it took away. It's like the way I don't think
necessarily people will be as invested in original Doctor Who
if there weren't so many stories missing in the 60s when nobody
quite knows what they were like or what happened in them.
Because you think of so many programs that exist in full, you
know, from around that time they were as big as Doctor Who where
nobody really cares. There is always this value in
the mystery, the non resolved question.
Oh, OK. Are you saying, are you
suggesting that Doctor Who may not have the same cache or
fascination as it has today if all the episodes existed still?
Oh absolutely, because I think for a start it may be more
easily available earlier on. There's there's that to
consider, but also that there is always something compelling
about a missing piece of a jigsaw.
One of the reasons people are so obsessed with Sid Barrett is
they're all lost songs by him that there's no way of hearing
unless they're very, very deep in Abbey Road somewhere.
Do you want to ever listen to Carnival of Light?
Yes, I do, but the reason is mainly because so many people
have said what's the point, just leave it in the vaults.
So that has spurred me on from just being vaguely interested in
thinking I have got a point to prove it.
I think that's that's different really.
Anyway, getting back to Billy Liers, is, is there anything
else that we haven't touched on that you've you particularly?
Yeah, I want to mention that I mean, this is an enduring this
about Billy Lier, the score by Richard Rodney Bennett, who was
a very serious composer but did a lot of soundtrack work.
He did the Doctor Who story, the Aztecs, which is one of the
early ones that does exist later in the 60's.
The billion dollar brain. Oh God, the third Harry Palmer
film, which you know, I, I, I love that personally, but it's
not quite as good as film as the first two.
But yeah, his Billy Liar score wasn't issued at the time.
The nearest that there wasn't official release was Acabilk did
the cover of Liz's team. Mr. Acabilk.
Mr. Acabilk asked the Billy Liar.
Just as an aside, I've recently been reading a brilliant
companion has just come out of 60s romance comic strips, you
know, from British sort of comics like Valentine and so on.
And a lot of them like take the name and inspiration for pop
songs. But there's one where a couple
go to see Akka build and they're praising his crazy rhythms.
I did post that on Twitter earlier today.
I was just, that just seemed completely alien to me as a
concept. I'm not quite sure what was so
romantic about his music, I mean.
No. It's it's version of the theme
for Billy Liar. It's not quite as it appears in
the film, but it's never been issued since and nobody seems to
know why. He's in the ghost goes gear.
He he is like a Bill. Not Richard Rodney Bennett, no.
No, I could. I could bilk with Nicholas
Parsons and Jack Hague and the Spencer Davis Group.
I would love to know. Well, no, I don't not even know.
I'd just love to hear it. I'd love to hear the full score,
you know, without the film dialogue over it.
And I just, I have no idea why that's never happened.
In the world where the Psychomania soundtrack has been
issued, complete with that sort of real and the guitar, when
that frog is revealed that it's just like one second long and
this done sound count was the frog, you know, why can't we
have the Billy Lyer soundtrack? Well, with AI, with AI the you
could probably separate it these days, right?
AI Kabil could do it. Is this a fair depiction of the
North? It's just, it's because, like
you say, it's not identified as any particular.
I know. What's it called in the novel?
What's the town called? Strathorton's slash strathauton.
Yeah, but it's filmed in Bradford, isn't it?
Yes, yeah. It could be any town I suppose,
in Yorkshire or Lancashire, the way it's depicted.
This was how the north was seen, I guess.
I. I think so.
I think to be honest, you know, I've got to say I wasn't there.
I don't know. But I grew up in a town that
took a long time to, you know, despite shortly after Billy Lye
came out, being almost the cultural capital of the world,
took a long time to catch up with modernity.
You know, there was still the same sort of buildings that you
see in that opening tracking shop.
Billy Lyer was still around into, you know, the early 80s
Really. I think it's an honest depiction
of what the North was like. It's like you've ever seen
Mourning in the Streets from 1959, which is BBC documentary
about Liverpool. No.
And it looks like very much like what you see in Billy Liar and I
would, I suppose, air the episodes of Coronation Street,
even though, you know, that's mostly studio bound, but you
know, they do have establishing shots and so on.
It's that sort of it's that hinterland between.
I don't know how to describe because it's it's even after the
post war world, but not caught up yet.
It's not an idealised view. I think it may be a slightly,
but you know, obvious artistic reasons, slightly distorted view
with the people and you know the attitudes and you know the idea
of, you know, don't get ideas, but it's not completely
invented. Yeah.
And then suddenly what, 4-5 years later that we get the four
Yorkshiremen sketch? Which has some again, they must
have seen Billy Liar. It's got some grounding.
Arguably in the take offs they do a Councillor Duxbury.
You know there there is a straight line.
To be fair, that was probably a familiar comic trope at the
time. But you do wonder, you know,
because that's one of the great things about Python is
particularly when you watch those early series of things
that only occur to you years later, what the inspiration was
with things like there's, you know, the sketch where it's got
the cardboard boxes on the top of the pop set performing yummy,
yummy, yummy. And that is basically based on
an early BBC Saturday Born in kid show called Zoko.
There's when Palin is doing the Gumby flower range says
chrysanthemum nums that is in dedicated to you, but you
weren't listening by Soft Machine.
Robert Wyatt says that and it came out just before it.
There's when they're doing the two Frenchmen with the diagram
of the flying sheep and pale in silence is clear by saying sweet
a Lapiste, which was a ABBC thriller, like sort of French
language instruction programs, you know, like teaching you
words while these people were on the run, say this is shadowy
agents, you know, so all of us in there.
So you and I have you and I have discussed previously.
The Bishop, of course, is big. Bread with the hog?
Yes, with the theme and the Bishop.
I recently found that was from another long forgotten ITV
detective show. I think it might be called The
Informer, and I don't think anything exists of it.
All right, OK, yeah, all this stuff was going in.
So it's not impossible that Billy Lyer had an influence on
For Yorkshiremen. Good afternoon Councillor.
That's a grand day for it. That one has been watching
football. Hey, I'm just bound for a walk
over the mower. What's they got there then?
What Crown jewels? No gramophone records.
LP's there were not like that when I were allowed.
No record players. We have to make us own music if
we wanted it. Mill Boys Choir we used to have.
Then there were Chapel choir, you see there were two Chapel
choirs because there was another Chapel down Moor Cross Road.
But they're all coming down. All the old buildings, trams,
they've gone city centre. That's all new.
You could. You could get a glass of beer,
meat, pie, cigarettes, matches and change out of full opens.
If you're listening, Michael Palin, please confirm it.
And then please come on this and then come on.
Look so familiar backwards. Yes, yeah.
We we look at the other people, snitch, tag over nothing,
because somebody please tag Michael Palin for a good reason.
OK, I'm sure I could knock together a few quid to pay it.
Not really. Intriguingly, I don't know,
Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall wrote a sketch for That was the
week that was called What is a Northerner?
I don't know if that exists anymore.
I haven't seen it. Oh, right.
OK. Yeah.
So that would have been around this time as well, wouldn't it?
Yeah. I wanted to take an opportunity
to mention. A comedy film that slipped
through the cracks at the time that Tom Courtney was a much
later on but I thought was brilliant, deserves to be so
better now. In fact, I think it's not been
available on DVD since about the year 2000.
I think it came out very early in existence of DVD and then
disappeared. But do you ever see what
happened to Harold Smith? No.
Which is, it's set in, so the early to mid 70s.
And he plays Harold Smith, who is the central character's
father, who becomes a minor local celebrity when he appears
to develop psychic abilities of telekinetic abilities.
And it's not a romantic view of well, actually it's indetermined
though when they're set as well because there's a character
who's a punk in it. It seems to be like, you know,
the 70s is the setting. For my money, it's a really good
film. It's just nobody noticed it.
I think it sort of appeared, you know, around the time there was
obviously The Full Monty and Full Weddings of the Funeral
were very successful. And then there are a lot of
films that were promoted to the next Full Weddings of the
Funeral slash The Full Monty that were not.
Well, things that grassed off as well.
That was quite successful. That was, but then you got
things like bring me the head of Mavis Davis and Solita too,
which which weren't, and I think this got lost amongst all of
those. And I do really like it.
I think it's a really good film. Yeah, and I'm really the the one
Tom Courtney film that I really, I mean, I enjoyed Billy Liar,
don't get me wrong, but really enjoyed a film he made, I don't
know, 10 years ago, maybe 15 years ago called 45 Years Not a
comedy. Oh, yes, yeah.
It's a it's a really good film. And Tom Courtney, I think went
on, in fact, I know he did. He went on care about a Mayo
show, pretty much. Pretty much told them, you know,
spoiled everything in terms of the whole plot of the film.
Well I hope I can spoiler over Andromeda for anyone but.
No, no, no. OK, Well, Tim, listen, thank you
so much for introducing me to this film because as I say, I've
never seen it before. And I'm really, I really
enjoyed, really enjoyed it. And it's just, it's a film that
I kind of felt thought that I knew what it was going to be
like, and then it was completely disabused of that when I
actually watched it. I'm really glad you did, because
yeah, it's probably not for everyone, but I really like it.
Full of surprises, full of faces as well, you know, familiar
faces as well. I always liked that in the film.
And So what are you working on at the moment?
You've got anything to particularly plug or promote?
There will be I can't really talk about something coming
later in the year that I would say it's worth watching out for
and might even have a very slight amount of goon related
content in it, which I can't really give away yet, but I'm
hoping it'll be worth the wait. But mainly at the moment, I
mean, you can still find me, you know, various magazines,
occasionally on the radio. In fact, that was on Radio
Scotland only yesterday morning. Talk about Dad's Army, which it
was a complete surprise. Well, a former high up at the
BBC had described it as the best use of the licence fee ever
because it was a very cost effective programme made a long
time ago that's still being shown now.
And I was basically asked, do you agree with this?
And I kind of think, yes, I do, you know, because it's not Even
so it's particularly to my personal taste.
But you cannot deny, you know, the importance of the longevity
of it. And it points to the fact that,
you know, this is what the BBC is there to do, is able to do.
And there are so many things that I like that, you know,
varying degrees of longevity in comparison, but that would not
have happened otherwise. And so, you know, we need to
take that to heart. We need to take it as a lesson
because, you know, people listening to this might resent
the licence fee. But if you're a goon fam.
Yeah. None of those things would have
happened without the BBC. No, I, I say that I'm full
awareness. The Idiot Weekly.
And yes, it's the Catherine Ray tube show.
We're on ITV. But you know what I mean.
You know, absolutely there would not have been.
But certainly whether this is a good thing or not, no other
channel would have done Queue. No.
Or owing colour, that's true. But yeah, but mainly if I meet
at timworthand.org and I do have two regular podcasters looks
unfamiliar, which when I say it's Nancy nostalgia show, I
don't mean it, you know, sort of violently deflating space
hoppers stamping 1 bars into the ground.
It's about when I say it's about the things that you remember
that there was ever scenes to people take exception if they do
remember something and that's not what it's about.
Like, for example, recently one of the Qils, Lydia Mizen was
always she's been on a few times actually, but one time she
talked about look around you. And more recently she talked
about Harry Enfield smashing nice, the end of the era and a
lot of mainly men of a certain age of say, But I remember that
the point was Lydia saw these things when she was like what
11-12? I went around saying to people
jump in that weird show where Harry Enfield played those DJs.
No, no, no, I don't I you know, and to her it's a forgotten
thing. So it is anything like that.
The no, there's not been that much good content, I will admit,
but you know, there's a lot of British comedy related content.
The other one is a podcast about sort of Marvel on screen called
it's good, except it sucks where I'm going to say not every
episode is for everyone, but I always get a guest, you know,
relevant to what we're talking about in terms of how they
approach it. So for it could be anything
from, you know, like what if, which is the sort of animated
series bottle turn that universe is, you know, Martin Ruddock,
who's very invested in the comics, came on to talk about
that. But on the other hand, I've had
people like Catherine Lowe with people like know from the Don't
you want Me podcast. I've never seen a Marvel film.
Asked if she could be on it, went to see Thor, love and
Thunder, and we have an incredibly entertaining chat
about that. And I do often get people on
who've never seen these things to get their opinion.
And it's quite interesting because on more than one
occasion they've enjoyed something more than I have.
Yeah, I I don't think I've ever seen a Marvel film in the wild.
OK, I would say if you like comedy films the next time, as
they frequently do, Ant Man or well any of them films apart
from Quad, Sylvania or any of the Guardians of the Galaxy film
show up at the Graham Norton on BBC One.
Give them a try because they are proper comedy films, the old
classic tradition and you will you.
I did say last time I was on, I did say on Twitter, you know, if
you like comedy, give this a try.
And the number of people I wasn't expecting said I really
enjoyed that. Thank you for forcing me to
watch it all. Right, I always get Guardians of
the Galaxy and Galaxy Quest mixed up.
Completely different aren't? They there's some common ground,
I'd say OK. Because I've seen Galaxy Quest
and and this forthcoming project that you're being a little bit
elliptical about. Is that the word?
If there is, if there is a possible way that we can
shoehorn in some sort of goon connection, then I'll definitely
have you have your back. Oh don't you worry, I've I've
got IPS already. I did mention highway in it.
Oh, OK, Moving on. Well, that's what he did.
Yes, thanks again to Tim. Thanks for listening and thanks
for supporting Goon Pod Film Club.
Really, really do appreciate you all.
Next month. It's 60 years of a Hard Day's
Night, so I hope you look forward to that.
And if you can, you know, let me know what you thought of this
month's show. That would be brilliant.
Any comments, feedback, it all helps, helps me to maintain a
certain level of quality. And until then, have a very
happy August. The.