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Live Now, Pay Later
If you like Tom Sharpe, you'll love Jack Trevor Story...
Welcome to 'never-never' land, that waste of industrial estates and cheap housing somewhere south of Birmingham and north of Luton airport - provincial England in the grim grip of Hire Purchase.
Follow Albert Argyle, prince of tally-boys, through the seedy manoeuvres of his trade as he lies, cheats and desperately attempts to graft his way out of his own worsening financial situation. Put your money down. Ten per cent deposit and you can LIVE NOW, PAY LATER.
Jack Trevor Story, prince of serio-comic novelists, has an astute eye for the absurd in ordinary life, a devastatingly acute ear for dialogue, and a very human sympathy for the silly housewives, sordid local politicians and greedy entrepreneurs who make up the cast of this infamous, hilarious novel.
Welcome to 'never-never' land, that waste of industrial estates and cheap housing somewhere south of Birmingham and north of Luton airport - provincial England in the grim grip of Hire Purchase.
Follow Albert Argyle, prince of tally-boys, through the seedy manoeuvres of his trade as he lies, cheats and desperately attempts to graft his way out of his own worsening financial situation. Put your money down. Ten per cent deposit and you can LIVE NOW, PAY LATER.
Jack Trevor Story, prince of serio-comic novelists, has an astute eye for the absurd in ordinary life, a devastatingly acute ear for dialogue, and a very human sympathy for the silly housewives, sordid local politicians and greedy entrepreneurs who make up the cast of this infamous, hilarious novel.
- GenresFiction
144 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1963
1 person is currently reading
19 people want to read
About the author
Jack Trevor Story
57 books12 followersJack Story was the son of a baker's roundsman and a domestic servant. During the First World War his father was killed and then his mother moved to Cambridge and worked in one of the colleges.
As a youngster he worked as a butcher's lad making local deliveries. He stated that his early education was derived from 'The Modern Boy', 'Melody Maker' and Action publications.
Self-taught, he began his writing in the early 1940s and it was said that he regularly wrote 4,000 words a day and often took only two or three weeks to finish a novel.
He was married three times and had eight children and also gained a reputation as a ladies' man and apparently he was often seen with glamorous women. As a consequence his domestic life was said to be chaotic, owing to his serial infidelity and his bankruptcy, both of which occasionally provided inspiration for some of his work.
He first achieved success as a writer with the Pinetop Jones Western stories (writing under the pseudonym Bret Harding) and he later achieved great fame contributing to the Sexton Blake detective series - he wrote 20 titles for the Sexton Blake Library. He was also well known for his Horace Spurgeon novels and the Albert Argyle trilogy. He also used the pseudonyms Alex Atwell and Rex Riotti.
When he was penniless in the 1970s he moved to the then new town of Milton Keynes, where he was given a flat about the Museum of Rural Life. He meant to stay only one year, but remained there for the rest of his life.
He wrote a weekly column for 'The Guardian' in the 1970s and appeared on television in the series 'Jack on the Box' in 1979. He wrote several screenplays, including the film 'Mix Me a Person', and was heavily involved in the film version of his novel 'Live Now - Pay Later'. His final broadcast was an audio diary entitled 'Jack's Last Tape'. His novel 'The Trouble with Harry' (1949) was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1955.
When someone once asked him why he didn't write an autobiography. He replied [referring to his novels and other writings], 'What do you think I've been doing all these years?'
He died in Milton Keynes on 5 December 1991.
As a youngster he worked as a butcher's lad making local deliveries. He stated that his early education was derived from 'The Modern Boy', 'Melody Maker' and Action publications.
Self-taught, he began his writing in the early 1940s and it was said that he regularly wrote 4,000 words a day and often took only two or three weeks to finish a novel.
He was married three times and had eight children and also gained a reputation as a ladies' man and apparently he was often seen with glamorous women. As a consequence his domestic life was said to be chaotic, owing to his serial infidelity and his bankruptcy, both of which occasionally provided inspiration for some of his work.
He first achieved success as a writer with the Pinetop Jones Western stories (writing under the pseudonym Bret Harding) and he later achieved great fame contributing to the Sexton Blake detective series - he wrote 20 titles for the Sexton Blake Library. He was also well known for his Horace Spurgeon novels and the Albert Argyle trilogy. He also used the pseudonyms Alex Atwell and Rex Riotti.
When he was penniless in the 1970s he moved to the then new town of Milton Keynes, where he was given a flat about the Museum of Rural Life. He meant to stay only one year, but remained there for the rest of his life.
He wrote a weekly column for 'The Guardian' in the 1970s and appeared on television in the series 'Jack on the Box' in 1979. He wrote several screenplays, including the film 'Mix Me a Person', and was heavily involved in the film version of his novel 'Live Now - Pay Later'. His final broadcast was an audio diary entitled 'Jack's Last Tape'. His novel 'The Trouble with Harry' (1949) was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1955.
When someone once asked him why he didn't write an autobiography. He replied [referring to his novels and other writings], 'What do you think I've been doing all these years?'
He died in Milton Keynes on 5 December 1991.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 5, 2025
I was recently asked to complete a customer-research survey which, instead of the usual questions about what newspapers do I read and what party do I vote for, asked me about “lifestyle preferences” such as whether I was “a saver or a spender”.
Apparently our attitude to this issue - save or spend? - is now one of the key indicators of who we are and what makes us tick. So Jack Trevor Story was sixty years ahead of his time when he examined this question.
His novel provides a fascinating insight into a form of credit that sprang up in the early 1960s, as a wave of new “consumer products” finally became available after two decades of rationing and austerity. The credit industry that the novel describes is entirely different from, say, pawnbroking that had existed for centuries as a means of raising emergency cash on some family valuable (grandfather’s watch or your best suit).
The Buy Now, Pay Later model of the novel is a life-style choice, not a tide-you-over loan to pay for an emergency. Buy Now, Pay Later isn’t a one-off loan with specified set repayments of capital and interest over a defined period. It’s an endless stream of (over-priced and shoddily manufactured) new stuff that you pay for in small cash payments handed over to a collector who visits you in person every week and who bullies and cajoles you into handing over anything still in your purse.
The new stuff might be things you actually need, like a washing machine, an oven or school uniform for the kids. But it’s just as likely to be rubbish that you don’t need. Gadgets that break down. Things to keep up with the Joneses (like the nylon hearth-rugs and chipboard cocktail cabinets so envied in the novel).
The point is, you’re always in hock. You never pay anything off fully. You’re still paying out of your house-keeping for fridges that stopped working and coats that fell apart months ago. The weekly payment system is just a way of life - live now, pay later.
And the weekly collectors are just as much a part of your life as your own family and neighbours. You may be trapped into owing them money for ever, but at least they’re a reassuring constant and even good company. And they’re not just collectors of cash. They’re selling you dreams and excitement too. From the latest model of vacuum cleaner to illicit weekly romances.
The collectors in this novel are called “tally boys” (“In the affluent society of today the tally boy was the new messiah, bible-punching the full-colour brochures which carried the cleansing needs of humanity” p11). Their world includes:
- Sleazy Mr Jefferies (Jeff to his mates), an older balding salesman whose years of experience give his “hooded eyes a calculating passion which had sold a hundred washing machines” (p18).
- Arnold Baxter, the junior sales rep, who picks his nose and understood “the problems of the new-rich working classes and spoke their language fluently” (p20).
- Vulgar, self-made Mr Callendar who runs the business, providing the stock and the capital, and dreams of owning “a real retail business with real shop assistants and a valuable office block above as a property investment” (p28).
- Hetty on the cash desk (“a plump, blonde, placid, happy-go-lucky mum of fifty” p21) whose creative accounts looked like “an immensely complicated jigsaw puzzle in which the picture didn’t matter as long as the pieces roughly fitted together” (p24).
- And of course, Albert Argyle, “the most brilliant door-to-door salesman … a super show-off, a super-womaniser, a super-fidler and confidence trickster” (p12). He’s the Lothario of Luton with a girl on every street and big dreams of fame and fortune. But Mr Callendar privately rates Albert as having no power, no money, no self-respect, no ability and no human feeling (p12).
The customers (victims? beneficiaries? co-conspirators?) include:
- Marjorie Mason the school-teacher’s alluring and easy-going wife. (Living on easy terms has become “the accepted thing” even for the middle classes - though it’s still rather embarrassing, a bit like “being seen going for prompt treatment for venereal disease” p17).
- A new customer, Coral Wentworth, lured onto the never-never through need, curiosity and envy “of all the marvellous clothes and furnishings” a friend seemed able to afford (p25).
- Joyce Corby, lonely, gentle and out of her depth, married to Reggie, the snobby, socially-aspiring estate agent with political pretensions.
- Mrs Galletty, the razor-sharp young housewife who triumphantly beats slimy salesman, Jeff, at his own game. She smartly exposes him as a lech and a bully, and she avenges her friend Daisy by extracting through blackmail a free sewing machine from him.
- The elderly and in no way confused Miss Agatha Riley who out-manoeuvres scheming Arnold when he tries to flog her an over-priced vacuum cleaner.
- Mumsy Grace, cuddly, plump and homely, mother of a brood of toddlers (one of them Albert’s) and still paying off the loan on a carpet shampooer.
Fascinating insights into the Sixties include:
- Wanting to tear down a Victorian straw-hat factory and replace it with a concrete office block (itself now doubtless condemned as a brutalist eye-sore).
- Written around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, people are so inured to living under the shadow of nuclear war that Mr Callendar has even incorporated the threat into his sales patter: “After all, who wants to save up for things these days? By the time you get it you may not be here with things as they are - and incidentally if anyone drops an atom bomb before you’ve finished paying we automatically cancel the account” (p17).
- Reggie and Joyce’s “lovely flat, tastefully decorated and furnished with fitted carpet, Regency chairs and settee, the latest coalglow electric fire and a pair of good reproduction paintings of horses; in fact the room had come straight out of a Homes and Gardens photograph” (p75).
But this book isn’t just a textbook on financial services. Or a morality tale. It’s billed as a comedy and it’s actually very funny in places. It’s also racist and misogynist, because it’s a novel about manners and attitudes of six decades ago when things were very different.
In any case, the unsavoury opinions are all voiced by, well, pretty unsavoury characters themselves (and interestingly always men). And should we condemn a novel and its author out of hand, just because they show us fictional characters who we find deplorable by our own contemporary standards?
Meanwhile the women in the novel generally out-smart their dullard menfolk and come out on top. The exception is poor Joyce Corby whose tragic defenestration has nothing to do with the hire purchase men. It’s actually the fault of her husband’s snooty friends who bizarrely declare she’s working class because she has her dressing table in front of her bedroom window …
On the other hand, things that made me laugh out loud in the novel included:
- Sensuous Marjorie Mason, supremely self-confident in her serial adultery, subtly reducing Albert, the so-called womaniser, down to size after their quickie: “I’m not talking about my husband coming home, petal - I’m expecting the carpet man. Do you know fitted carpets cost the earth - I seem to have been paying him for ten years! Do hurry, Albert - did you have to take your shoes off?” (p60).
- The same Marjorie Mason, helping Albert carry a dodgy washing machine into his van, entirely naked under her coat, “trying to hold down the blowing mac with one hand”. Daring man-of-the world Albert is mortified by what the neighbours might think but Marjorie’s entirely indifferent (“There’s not one of them got a home like mine, petal … “ p61).
- Albert describing Reggie Corby’s set - “estate agents, solicitors, bank clerks, all on the grind, all in each other’s pockets” - as “all as phoney as arse-‘oles, if you’ll forgive the mot juste” (p73).
- The posh but unworldly Miss Alcott who in total innocence turns her struggling secretarial agency into a call-girl business that thrives because “she had the knack of making prostitution seem a respectable and necessary amenity in the Welfare State” (p82).
- And probably the most surreal sentence of all times: “The boy with an unbeatable conker in his pocket has got more to be proud of than the boy with an unpaid-for transistor radio” (p88).
But if some things change, others don’t. Living beyond your means on credit you never pay off is still just as much a part of human nature as it was sixty years ago.
I realised this looking at a garish leaflet delivered (curiously by the postman who used to deliver letters) advertising buy-one-get-one-free pizzas now available, apparently, on easy terms. Imagine that - slices of doughy pizza that you’re still paying for months later. Truly we’re very much still living now and paying later … and that would have made Jack Trevor Story roar with laughter …
Apparently our attitude to this issue - save or spend? - is now one of the key indicators of who we are and what makes us tick. So Jack Trevor Story was sixty years ahead of his time when he examined this question.
His novel provides a fascinating insight into a form of credit that sprang up in the early 1960s, as a wave of new “consumer products” finally became available after two decades of rationing and austerity. The credit industry that the novel describes is entirely different from, say, pawnbroking that had existed for centuries as a means of raising emergency cash on some family valuable (grandfather’s watch or your best suit).
The Buy Now, Pay Later model of the novel is a life-style choice, not a tide-you-over loan to pay for an emergency. Buy Now, Pay Later isn’t a one-off loan with specified set repayments of capital and interest over a defined period. It’s an endless stream of (over-priced and shoddily manufactured) new stuff that you pay for in small cash payments handed over to a collector who visits you in person every week and who bullies and cajoles you into handing over anything still in your purse.
The new stuff might be things you actually need, like a washing machine, an oven or school uniform for the kids. But it’s just as likely to be rubbish that you don’t need. Gadgets that break down. Things to keep up with the Joneses (like the nylon hearth-rugs and chipboard cocktail cabinets so envied in the novel).
The point is, you’re always in hock. You never pay anything off fully. You’re still paying out of your house-keeping for fridges that stopped working and coats that fell apart months ago. The weekly payment system is just a way of life - live now, pay later.
And the weekly collectors are just as much a part of your life as your own family and neighbours. You may be trapped into owing them money for ever, but at least they’re a reassuring constant and even good company. And they’re not just collectors of cash. They’re selling you dreams and excitement too. From the latest model of vacuum cleaner to illicit weekly romances.
The collectors in this novel are called “tally boys” (“In the affluent society of today the tally boy was the new messiah, bible-punching the full-colour brochures which carried the cleansing needs of humanity” p11). Their world includes:
- Sleazy Mr Jefferies (Jeff to his mates), an older balding salesman whose years of experience give his “hooded eyes a calculating passion which had sold a hundred washing machines” (p18).
- Arnold Baxter, the junior sales rep, who picks his nose and understood “the problems of the new-rich working classes and spoke their language fluently” (p20).
- Vulgar, self-made Mr Callendar who runs the business, providing the stock and the capital, and dreams of owning “a real retail business with real shop assistants and a valuable office block above as a property investment” (p28).
- Hetty on the cash desk (“a plump, blonde, placid, happy-go-lucky mum of fifty” p21) whose creative accounts looked like “an immensely complicated jigsaw puzzle in which the picture didn’t matter as long as the pieces roughly fitted together” (p24).
- And of course, Albert Argyle, “the most brilliant door-to-door salesman … a super show-off, a super-womaniser, a super-fidler and confidence trickster” (p12). He’s the Lothario of Luton with a girl on every street and big dreams of fame and fortune. But Mr Callendar privately rates Albert as having no power, no money, no self-respect, no ability and no human feeling (p12).
The customers (victims? beneficiaries? co-conspirators?) include:
- Marjorie Mason the school-teacher’s alluring and easy-going wife. (Living on easy terms has become “the accepted thing” even for the middle classes - though it’s still rather embarrassing, a bit like “being seen going for prompt treatment for venereal disease” p17).
- A new customer, Coral Wentworth, lured onto the never-never through need, curiosity and envy “of all the marvellous clothes and furnishings” a friend seemed able to afford (p25).
- Joyce Corby, lonely, gentle and out of her depth, married to Reggie, the snobby, socially-aspiring estate agent with political pretensions.
- Mrs Galletty, the razor-sharp young housewife who triumphantly beats slimy salesman, Jeff, at his own game. She smartly exposes him as a lech and a bully, and she avenges her friend Daisy by extracting through blackmail a free sewing machine from him.
- The elderly and in no way confused Miss Agatha Riley who out-manoeuvres scheming Arnold when he tries to flog her an over-priced vacuum cleaner.
- Mumsy Grace, cuddly, plump and homely, mother of a brood of toddlers (one of them Albert’s) and still paying off the loan on a carpet shampooer.
Fascinating insights into the Sixties include:
- Wanting to tear down a Victorian straw-hat factory and replace it with a concrete office block (itself now doubtless condemned as a brutalist eye-sore).
- Written around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, people are so inured to living under the shadow of nuclear war that Mr Callendar has even incorporated the threat into his sales patter: “After all, who wants to save up for things these days? By the time you get it you may not be here with things as they are - and incidentally if anyone drops an atom bomb before you’ve finished paying we automatically cancel the account” (p17).
- Reggie and Joyce’s “lovely flat, tastefully decorated and furnished with fitted carpet, Regency chairs and settee, the latest coalglow electric fire and a pair of good reproduction paintings of horses; in fact the room had come straight out of a Homes and Gardens photograph” (p75).
But this book isn’t just a textbook on financial services. Or a morality tale. It’s billed as a comedy and it’s actually very funny in places. It’s also racist and misogynist, because it’s a novel about manners and attitudes of six decades ago when things were very different.
In any case, the unsavoury opinions are all voiced by, well, pretty unsavoury characters themselves (and interestingly always men). And should we condemn a novel and its author out of hand, just because they show us fictional characters who we find deplorable by our own contemporary standards?
Meanwhile the women in the novel generally out-smart their dullard menfolk and come out on top. The exception is poor Joyce Corby whose tragic defenestration has nothing to do with the hire purchase men. It’s actually the fault of her husband’s snooty friends who bizarrely declare she’s working class because she has her dressing table in front of her bedroom window …
On the other hand, things that made me laugh out loud in the novel included:
- Sensuous Marjorie Mason, supremely self-confident in her serial adultery, subtly reducing Albert, the so-called womaniser, down to size after their quickie: “I’m not talking about my husband coming home, petal - I’m expecting the carpet man. Do you know fitted carpets cost the earth - I seem to have been paying him for ten years! Do hurry, Albert - did you have to take your shoes off?” (p60).
- The same Marjorie Mason, helping Albert carry a dodgy washing machine into his van, entirely naked under her coat, “trying to hold down the blowing mac with one hand”. Daring man-of-the world Albert is mortified by what the neighbours might think but Marjorie’s entirely indifferent (“There’s not one of them got a home like mine, petal … “ p61).
- Albert describing Reggie Corby’s set - “estate agents, solicitors, bank clerks, all on the grind, all in each other’s pockets” - as “all as phoney as arse-‘oles, if you’ll forgive the mot juste” (p73).
- The posh but unworldly Miss Alcott who in total innocence turns her struggling secretarial agency into a call-girl business that thrives because “she had the knack of making prostitution seem a respectable and necessary amenity in the Welfare State” (p82).
- And probably the most surreal sentence of all times: “The boy with an unbeatable conker in his pocket has got more to be proud of than the boy with an unpaid-for transistor radio” (p88).
But if some things change, others don’t. Living beyond your means on credit you never pay off is still just as much a part of human nature as it was sixty years ago.
I realised this looking at a garish leaflet delivered (curiously by the postman who used to deliver letters) advertising buy-one-get-one-free pizzas now available, apparently, on easy terms. Imagine that - slices of doughy pizza that you’re still paying for months later. Truly we’re very much still living now and paying later … and that would have made Jack Trevor Story roar with laughter …
March 3, 2022
This is very much a book of its time, and a modern reader will find the insouciant sexism and occasionally racism of the main character quite shocking. But as I say, it is a book of its time, and is probably a more accurate depiction of what an uneducated white man was like than what we find in many more luminous works from that era. If you can get past that, it's a good tale well told, with a pretty contemptible protagonist employed in a sleazy business. No, it's not in the same league as 'Saturday Night Sunday Morning', 'The L Shaped Room', or 'Room at the Top', and I can see why it hasn't stood the test of time in the same way. JTS was my uncle, so I do have an interest to declare, but overall I did enjoy the read.
December 3, 2017
A book of its time, except it isn't - we know how to get away with not paying at all. Off to watch the film on youtube.
May 9, 2011
10p! First novel of a trilogy, 3 bob Penguin, pub 1964.
Thanks Karl for putting up the cover.
I've always seen Jack Trevor Story's (JTS) name around, he wrote many episodes of TV series I watched growing up in the 60s and early 70s, eg Dixon of Dock Green, No Hiding Place and Budgie, and his novels were around (such as 'Mix me a Person' and 'The Trouble with Harry', filmed by Hitchcock). I hadn't really thought much about him until I was in an anthology called 'Neonlit: The Time Out Book of New Writing, Vol 1' (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/79...) and found out from the introduction I was runner up for the Jack Trevor Story Memorial Prize, sponsored and judged by Michael Moorcock. The terms of the prize, worth £500, are 'based on JTS's famous reply to the bankruptcy judge who asked where his film advance money had gone in such a short time: "You know how it is , your honour, twenty or twenty thousand, it always lasts a week to a fortnight." The terms then, as devised by MM, are that the money be spent within a fortnight and the author should preferably have nothing to show for it.'
Sounds like my type of bloke (great website about him: http://www.jacktrevorstory.co.uk/), but I didn't read, despite my interest in British 50s and 60s 'working class' fiction, part of the whole 'kitchen sink' movement that includes plays and films and was quite a potent cultural force when I was growing up. Then recently I saw this for next to nothing - this being a Penguin classic, and read the biog, which mentioned that JTS began work at 14, at first in a coal office and then in a slaughter house, and he had been married twice with eight children. The book came out in 1963, a year after the film of the same name, scripted by JTS, so I suspect this is a novelised screenplay, and probably hurriedly put together, but nevertheless is full of the manic energy of its main character Albert Argyle, a 'tally boy' who sells all kinds of goods to the needy housewives of post war Britain, recovering from rationing and austerity and feeling the benefits of a new relative affluence, and pounced upon by firms such as Callendars, who Albert works for, signing up customers for hire purchase. He is one of a succession of 'wide boys' who have the lip and wit to sell anything to (and often bed) the wives. A precursor of 'Alfie' (Michael Caine's film came out a couple of years later) and a succesor to Arthur Seaton (Satusday Night and Sunday Morning came out just before). You can see an example of his technique from the opening sequence of the film on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TywAe_...
The book is full of fast mouthed comedy and sarcasm and farce (eg a lot of near misses with husbands not catching wives in flagrante and vice versa). I would recommend it for a blast of the past, and I'd love to see the film, but contemporary readers might balk (baulk?) at the casual sexism and racism, prevalent at the time. These are combined in an incredible sequence when Albert has to apologise to Joe Russel the black bloke in the flat below him for the partying of his mates (Albert has rented the flat of course a la The apartment). Russel sees him coming down the stairs:
'Mr Argyle?'
'That's me, Sambo,' Albert's friendly grin took away the impertinence.
He manages to sweet talk Joe, by pretending he is getting married -
'Well, congratulaions!' Joe Russel said. His wife was smiling now round the door, the black child was eating again...'Perhaps you'd like the wife to clear up for you?..She'd be happy to..'
So I was happy to read this, JTS's writing flows along easily and keeps you laughing (if also jolted by its political incorrectness), but not sure I'm going to be seeking out the next two parts of the trilogy about Albert, called 'Something for Nothing' and 'The Urban District Lover'.
Thanks Karl for putting up the cover.
I've always seen Jack Trevor Story's (JTS) name around, he wrote many episodes of TV series I watched growing up in the 60s and early 70s, eg Dixon of Dock Green, No Hiding Place and Budgie, and his novels were around (such as 'Mix me a Person' and 'The Trouble with Harry', filmed by Hitchcock). I hadn't really thought much about him until I was in an anthology called 'Neonlit: The Time Out Book of New Writing, Vol 1' (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/79...) and found out from the introduction I was runner up for the Jack Trevor Story Memorial Prize, sponsored and judged by Michael Moorcock. The terms of the prize, worth £500, are 'based on JTS's famous reply to the bankruptcy judge who asked where his film advance money had gone in such a short time: "You know how it is , your honour, twenty or twenty thousand, it always lasts a week to a fortnight." The terms then, as devised by MM, are that the money be spent within a fortnight and the author should preferably have nothing to show for it.'
Sounds like my type of bloke (great website about him: http://www.jacktrevorstory.co.uk/), but I didn't read, despite my interest in British 50s and 60s 'working class' fiction, part of the whole 'kitchen sink' movement that includes plays and films and was quite a potent cultural force when I was growing up. Then recently I saw this for next to nothing - this being a Penguin classic, and read the biog, which mentioned that JTS began work at 14, at first in a coal office and then in a slaughter house, and he had been married twice with eight children. The book came out in 1963, a year after the film of the same name, scripted by JTS, so I suspect this is a novelised screenplay, and probably hurriedly put together, but nevertheless is full of the manic energy of its main character Albert Argyle, a 'tally boy' who sells all kinds of goods to the needy housewives of post war Britain, recovering from rationing and austerity and feeling the benefits of a new relative affluence, and pounced upon by firms such as Callendars, who Albert works for, signing up customers for hire purchase. He is one of a succession of 'wide boys' who have the lip and wit to sell anything to (and often bed) the wives. A precursor of 'Alfie' (Michael Caine's film came out a couple of years later) and a succesor to Arthur Seaton (Satusday Night and Sunday Morning came out just before). You can see an example of his technique from the opening sequence of the film on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TywAe_...
The book is full of fast mouthed comedy and sarcasm and farce (eg a lot of near misses with husbands not catching wives in flagrante and vice versa). I would recommend it for a blast of the past, and I'd love to see the film, but contemporary readers might balk (baulk?) at the casual sexism and racism, prevalent at the time. These are combined in an incredible sequence when Albert has to apologise to Joe Russel the black bloke in the flat below him for the partying of his mates (Albert has rented the flat of course a la The apartment). Russel sees him coming down the stairs:
'Mr Argyle?'
'That's me, Sambo,' Albert's friendly grin took away the impertinence.
He manages to sweet talk Joe, by pretending he is getting married -
'Well, congratulaions!' Joe Russel said. His wife was smiling now round the door, the black child was eating again...'Perhaps you'd like the wife to clear up for you?..She'd be happy to..'
So I was happy to read this, JTS's writing flows along easily and keeps you laughing (if also jolted by its political incorrectness), but not sure I'm going to be seeking out the next two parts of the trilogy about Albert, called 'Something for Nothing' and 'The Urban District Lover'.
April 19, 2013
Like a working-class 1960s Evelyn Waugh,but funnier, more inventive and more acerbic. Albert Argyle (ne Harris) and the story of his adult life as a salesman is a thing of brillinalty twisted wonder, dead-on characterisation and frequently macabre, but never ludicrous, black humour.
Best bits - Albert's girlfriend who lives in his car and comes to think of it as home. Sounds daft, but the gradual steps up in her delusion are so well done that at times it even seems sensible :)
Best bits - Albert's girlfriend who lives in his car and comes to think of it as home. Sounds daft, but the gradual steps up in her delusion are so well done that at times it even seems sensible :)
November 11, 2016
Less angry young men and more chancing young men, this book is set in the world of the tally boy and goods for credit culture of the 60s. Everyone is out for what they can get and nothing really works out for anyone to varying degrees. A downbeat realistic vision of the swinging sixties.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews