Funny Girl is the story of the early career of the vivacious, hilarious Sophie Straw, star of the much-loved BBC situation comedy Barbara (and Jim), the television programme that ran for four series in the mid-1960s, helped define its era and, crucially, does not exist. The imaginative kernel of Nick Hornby’s new novel is a classic Sixties British sitcom somewhere between Marriage Lines and Till Death Us Do Part, starring the sort of person who rarely received top billing in such shows at that time: a bright, beautiful and naturally funny young woman. Barbara Windsor, Sheila Steafel, Eleanor Bron or either Liver Bird: none of them was Sophie Straw, quite.
In fact, Hornby is explicit in naming Sophie Straw’s inspiration and, presumably, his own: Lucille Ball. The young Sophie — actually Barbara Parker from Blackpool — calls her ‘the funniest woman who’s ever been on television’. But, as she notes, all the lead players in the equivalent British comedy shows were men: ‘Tony, Ernie, Eric, Ernie… There was nobody called Lucy or Barbara in that lot.’
However, once Barbara Parker has caught the train to London (in true Billy Liar fashion) and changed her name, Funny Girl is less a novel about the female lead of Barbara (and Jim) and more the rise and fall of the imaginary show itself and the men who wrote and produced it.
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