Billyboy

> "Well if it isn't fat stinking billygoat Billyboy in poison."
>  Billy Boy is a rival gang leader of Alex's complete with his own group of Droogs.
>
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Billyboy first appears in the story as an arch-nemesis to his rival droog-leader Alex, similar to other gangs who are of their age.

## Life

**Part One**

First appearing at the Municipal Power Plant, after Alex and his Droogs arrived after assaulting a few victims along the way, such as an old scholar, they came across their rival gang leader Billyboy and his five thugs. According to Alex, the teaming up was mostly by fours or fives, these being like auto-teams, four being a comfy number for an auto, and six being the outside limit for gang-size in these days. Sometimes gangs would gang up so as to make like little armies for big night-war (gang wars that is), but mostly it was best to roam in these like small numbers. Billyboy was something that made Alex repulsed at the sight of his smile alone, and Billyboy always had this stench of very stale oil that's been used for frying over and over, even when he was dressed in his best outfit, as of now. Both rival gangs gave each other quiet stare-downs, getting prepared to pull their weapons out against each other, which is just the way both Billyboy and Alex love it rather than just punching and kicking. Billyboy and his droogs stopped what they were doing, which was just getting ready to perform something on a crying and panicky little girl they had with them, not more than ten, she then flees while screaming with her clothes still on and her thin white legs flashing through the dark; not to long ago, Billyboy was holding down that little girl by one hand while his second-in-command, Leo, was holding the other, attempting to gang-rape her until they were interrupted by Alex causing them to see the four coming as they let go of this crying abused child because there are plenty more where she came from. As Alex let's out a 'Oh oh oh'. with a wild grin, he famously says: 'Well, if it isn't fat stinking billygoat Billyboy in poison. How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap stinking chip-oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if you have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly, thou.' And then they all engaged into a gang-driven street fight.

There were six of Billyboy's droogs to four of Alex's droogs as it was already indicated before, the two gangs begin to battle away in the moonlit darkness. In the middle of the fight, Alex with his weapon of choice being 'a fine starry horrorshow cut-throat britva', he managed to neatly slit down the front of one of Billyboy's droog's clothes without cutting him, which this thug suddenly as well as furiously finding himself all opened up like a peapod, with his belly bare and his genitals exposed, the thug waved and screamed losing his guard just to unwittingly letting in a scruffled up Dim in with his bike chain, so that Dim could hit him right in the eyes, and this droog of Billyboy's went tottering off and howling his heart out in agony. The droogs were gaining the upper hand, by also defeating Billyboy's second-in-command who was mentioned earlier, by also getting stricken in the eyes from Dim's bike chain to cause him to crawl and howl about like an animal, but with one kick to the head, he was down underfoot in an unconscious state.

Billyboy was next for last for Alex to fight off, he was 'dancing about with my britva like I might be a barber on board a ship on a very rough sea, trying to get in at him with a few fair slashes on his unclean oily litso.' Billyboy whipped out his knife which Alex describes as a 'long flick-type', but Billyboy was a bit too slow and heavy in his movements to inflict pain on anyone. This easy fight made Alex feel like he us waltzing with Billyboy, such as carving both on his cheeks, to make it look like two red curtains made of blood fall out at the same time between his nose in the winter starlight which Billyboy didn't feel the pain felt, as he went lumbering on like a 'filthy fatty bear', poking at Alex with his knife.

Before Alex could continue the fight, he and his droogs heard police sirens and knew the authorities have been informed, and were arriving with firearms pushing out of the police-auto-windows at the ready. Alex assuming that ten-year-old girl called the police on the two gangs, because there was a box for calling emergency numbers not too far behind the Muni Power Plant. Before Alex leaves, he says to Billyboy 'Get you soon, fear not, stinking billygoat. I'll have your yarbles off lovely.' Then the five of Billyboy's gang ran off, slow and panting, except for Leo out snoring on the ground, away north towards the river, as Alex and his droogs ran the other way.

**Part Three**

## Film

After Alex and his Droogs assault a drunken Irish tramp, the next scene cuts to viewing from below a 17th century style graceful painting of flowers spilling out of a vase atop a balustrade that is depicted with such skilled perspective it seems real rather than an artificial ornamentation of the ceiling. A woman's screams are heard through the strains of Rossini's "The Thieving Magpie". The camera pans down to show a gold toned sculpture below, the head of a bearded and crowned antique deity on an archway overlooking a theatrical stage--perhaps Poseidon, accompanied as he is by scalloped shells, though Dionysus is the patron god of theater. Against the back wall of the stage is a dirty old pink and white patterned mattress. We see several oversize costume heads, all cartoonish and grotesque, one of a black man in red Fez, and next to it a white man in a university style diploma cap (generations of education looking over the scene). Stark shadows again extend against the back wall. Men in camouflage jackets and assorted military hats are flinging about on the stage as a voluptuous woman in her mid-teens vainly struggles against them, her clothing in shreds and wearing nothing but her Greek/Roman-styled sandals with the ties going up to her knees. The camera pulls back further revealing the full stage with its torn theater curtains.

As Billyboy and his Droogs throw the woman on two more pink and white patterned mattresses. The camera cuts to Alex and his Droogs who were watching sadistically at the back of the theater where the shadows are, and intervenes by kicking a glass bottle to their direction as he gets closer to them while insulting and threatening Billyboy. The attention of Billy Boy and his droogs diverted, the woman takes the opportunity to flee--and, for a moment, ridiculously, Alex and his droogs become heroes, having saved her.

Billy Boy and his gang are attired in 1960s frilled Tuxedo-shirts (one of them in orange) with camouflage jackets and leather trousers. Billy Boy wears a Nazi Iron Cross, as well as a Nazi hat with the Iron Eagle, and goggles. Around his waist is a cumber band sort of belt that is a skull head against perhaps a red sun. So, not only do Alex and his gang become quasi-heros through the woman being saved from rape by their intrusion, but because they are in opposition of a gang decked out in Nazi regalia. In their white uniforms they become the good gang.

Rather than a fight we get an all out slapstick ballet of a chair bashing, bottle breaking (1964 Moet and Chandon **Brut Imperial** Rose champagne) on head head-on brute brawl with Alex and Billy Boy and their gangs, all ferocious glee and fearfully even delightfully impressive after the horror of the anticipated rape scene. Perhaps a relief for the audience. We've not had to watch a rape. Instead we get a comic strip with Big Heads overseeing a wonderful, invigorating dance. The christening of Billy Boy with the **Brut Imperial Rose** seems a fitting touch.

But again, there's this disorienting conflict. We were prepared for a rape, reluctant to see it perhaps, and then instead we have this rather invigorating ballet of violence. Conflict. We're not supposed to like violence but this is fun, perfectly choreographed, and Alex and his droogs are being good guys in their saving of the young woman.

Finally a long shot from one of the theater's corners shows Alex and his droogs, having beaten Billyboy's gang, finishing off the job with a good clubbing of their nearly immobile bodies.

The stage is now completely dark, no light falling on it. As the casino is derelict, abandoned, and would have no electricity, one wonders at the source of the bright white light in the background, for we are led to assume that all the happenings have occurred at night, and the light seems to be too brilliant for a street lamp. From where does the brilliancy emanate? This isn't to say that I think this has any particular meaning. There was at first ample stage light and Alex and his droogs emerging out of the dark. Now we have a dark stage and this dramatic light through which Alex and his droogs will run and be briefly, starkly illuminated as they escape into the darkness of the door.

We have moved from red dominating the dark to it paling beside this combination of bright white electrifying blue drapery and the blue of the night beyond the shattered luminescent windows.

Alex is thrashing a rival gang member with a club when he suddenly stops, alerted to something, and listens. He whistles for his men to be silent. Alex whistles again. All have stopped but Dim, who continues a beating. Alex whistles again. We hear the sounds of sirens as Alex orders his Droogs to evacuate. The authority more powerful than the gangs as well as being seen in the story as the biggest gang of all: The Police. Which gives Alex and his droogs no other choice but to flee, yipping, out the door, leaving Billyboy and his Droogs in an unconscious or possibly dying state.

## Trivia

* In the movie adaptation of the novel, Billyboy doesn't return later on as a police officer, the role was being taken by an older Georgie instead, who was originally killed off in the book version.
* When Billyboy and his droogs commit a gang-rape to a 'weepy-devotchka' during their first appearances in the story, she is a young woman her mid-teens as shown in the film adaptation; in the book, she is just ten years old. Similarly, the two teen girls we see Alex charming with in the record shop and taking home to do scandalous acts with them are also just ten years old according to the book.
* Billyboy was portrayed by Richard Connaught who also made appearances in the BBC crime-drama series **Softly Softly: Task Force** (1969 - 1976), and the UK horror-comedy film **Tales That Witness Madness** (1973).
* Billyboy's weapon of choice is a long switch-blade.