Keith Waterhouse (born 6 February 1929 in Leeds, England) is a novelist, newspaper columnist, and the writer of many television series. His credits, many with life-long friend and collaborator Willis Hall, include satires such as That Was The Week That Was, BBC-3 and The Frost Report during the early 1960s, Budgie, Worzel Gummidge, and Andy Capp (an adaptation of the comic strip).
His 1959 book Billy Liar was subsequently filmed by John Schlesinger with Tom Courtenay in the part of Billy. It was nominated in six categories of the 1964 BAFTA awards, including Best Screenplay, and was nominated for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1963; in the early 1970s a sitcom based on the character was quite popular and ran to 25 episodes--a respectable run for a British sitcom, although it has seldom been seen since.
His first screenplay was the 1961 film Whistle Down the Wind and his most recent production was Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell in 1999, based on the life of journalist Jeffrey Bernard.
He also wrote regularly for Punch and the Daily Mirror, and currently for the Daily Mail. His extended style book for the Daily Mirror, In The Newspaper Style, is regarded as a classic textbook for modern journalism.
