The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. His experiences there formed the basis of his first novel, Both the Ladies and the Gentlemen (1975).

By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. If further recommendation be needed, then surely there is none finer than Glenda Slagg/Linda Lee Potter: "About as funny as pushing somebody fully clothed into a swimming pool. Root first came to my attention more years ago than I care to admit when I was in Denmark and saw the televised version of Root into Europe. By the way , reading the Private Eye magazine I can't help comparing it's "styles" with those incredible originals scripts, written by Henry Moor. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.Donaldson's third marriage, in 1986, was to Cherry Hatrick, who survived him; they separated six months after their marriage. The cheek and audacity of Henry Root leaps off the page and each anecdote is funnier and more preposterous than the last.

Together, they provide a powerful impression of what life must have been like in late-Seventies Britain for a retired trader in wet fish, seeing his country overrun by lesbians, lefties and other losers.

This book is a compendium of actual letters which the author wrote to all kinds of people of note - all from his persona of some kind of hard core petite bourgeoise British citizen. com, who sent a letter to all US senators, posing as a child and asking them for their favourite joke.

Liz Reed - another character created by William Donaldson, Reed's TV production pitches - for shows such as 'Disabled Gladiators' and 'Anglotrash' - in the guise of Heart Felt Productions were collected in the 1998 book, The Heart Felt Letters. Not only have so many of the people approached here faded from the memory that one can't quite remember why they were laughable, but some of the attitudes verge on bullying and prejudice in a way that's now well beyond the bounds of acceptability by today's mores. Henry Root, who made a fortune in wet fish, spent ten years in correspondence with powerful and famous people across Britain. It consists of real correspondence between an apparently wealthy and eccentric retired fish-merchant, and many public figures to whom he wrote, requesting support for bizarre right-wing proposals.Published in 1980, what would Henry Root of the wet fish emporium make of the A to Z listers of today. He later remembered that "sex, whether in company or not, has been the only department in life in which I have demanded from anyone taking part the very highest standards of seriousness. Donaldson's ghastly creation wrote outrageous, threatening, scurrilous and outlandish letters to public figures, praising, insulting or attempting to bribe them.

The letters aren’t really dated, with the exception of certain BBC television stars and the one to the South African Ambassador. His heroes were few, but those who were, to Root's mind, "sound" - principally Mrs Thatcher, the Dowager Lady Birdwood and James Anderton, "God's Cop", the self-appointed guardian of Greater Manchester's morals.You Cannot Live As I Have Lived and Not End Up Like This: The thoroughly disgraceful life and times of Willie Donaldson. H. Rochester Sneath - the fictional headmaster of the fictional British public school Selhurst, created by Humphry Berkeley. This single volume brings together "The Henry Root Letters" and "The Further Letters of Henry Root". The millions who enjoyed the original 'Root' will no doubt have assumed that such a public and hysterical scam could never be repeated.