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Keith Waterhouse CBE | |
|---|---|
| Born | Keith Spencer Waterhouse (1929-02-06)6 February 1929 |
| Died | 4 September 2009(2009-09-04) (aged 80) London, England |
| Occupation(s) | Novelist, Columnist,Writer |
| Notable work | Billy Liar,Worzel Gummidge |
Keith Spencer WaterhouseCBE (6 February 1929 – 4 September 2009[1]) was a British novelist and newspaper columnist and the writer of many television series. He was also a noted arbiter of newspaper style and journalistic writing.
Keith Waterhouse was born inHunslet,Leeds,West Riding of Yorkshire, England. He performed two years ofnational service in theRoyal Air Force.
His credits, many with lifelong friend and collaboratorWillis Hall, includesatires such asThat Was The Week That Was,BBC-3 andThe Frost Report during the 1960s; the book for the 1975 musicalThe Card;Budgie;Worzel Gummidge; andAndy Capp (an adaptation of thecomic strip).
His 1959 bookBilly Liar was subsequently filmed byJohn Schlesinger withTom Courtenay as Billy. It was nominated in six categories of the 1964BAFTA awards, including Best Screenplay, and was nominated for the Golden Lion at theVenice Film Festival in 1963; in the early 1970s the sitcomBilly Liar based on the character was quite popular and ran to 25 episodes.
Waterhouse's first screenplay was the filmWhistle Down the Wind (1961). He also wroteA Kind of Loving for Schlesinger.[2] Without receiving screen credit, Waterhouse and Hall claimed to have extensively rewritten the script forAlfred Hitchcock'sTorn Curtain (1966). Waterhouse wrote the comic play,Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell (1989;Old Vic premiere, 1999), based on the louche life of London journalistJeffrey Bernard.
His career began at theYorkshire Evening Post and he also wrote regularly forPunch, theDaily Mirror, and latterly for theDaily Mail. He initially joined theMirror as a reporter in 1952, before he became a playwright and novelist; during his initial stint, he campaigned against thecolour bar in post-war Britain,[3] the abuses committed in the name of theBritish Empire inKenya[4] and the British government's selling of weapons to variousMiddle Eastern countries.[5] Subsequently, he returned as a columnist, initially in theMirror Magazine, moving to the main newspaper on 22 June 1970,[6] on Mondays, and extending to Thursdays from 16 July 1970. Waterhouse published extracts from the columns in the booksMondays, Thursdays andRhubarb, Rhubarb and Other Noises.
His extended style book for theDaily Mirror,Waterhouse on Newspaper Style,[7] is regarded as a classic textbook for modern journalism. This was followed by a pocket book on English usage intended for a wider audience entitledEnglish Our English (And How To Sing It). He moved from theMirror to theMail in 1986 out of his objection to theMirror's ownership byRobert Maxwell, and remained at theMail until shortly before his death.
He fought long crusades to highlight what he perceived to be a decline in the standards of modern English; for example, he founded the Association for the Abolition of theAberrant Apostrophe, whose members attempt to stem the tide of suchsolecisms as "potatoe's" and "pound's of apple's and orange's" in greengrocers' shops.[8][9]
In February 2004, he was voted Britain's most admired contemporary columnist by theBritish Journalism Review.[10]
On 4 September 2009, a statement released by his family announced that Waterhouse had died quietly in his sleep at his home in London. He was 80 years old.[1]
