Angling: TV legacy of Fisher king

THAT'S it, says Nick Fisher. No more Screaming Reels. After five series, the man who has changed the public perception of anglers is quitting to er, spend more time with his family. Actually, I made that last bit up. For a start, Fisher is careful to ensure that there is always time to take Rory, three, and Rex, one, angling on the Hertford Canal close to his home. "They love touching fishes' eyeballs," he says.

And though the present series has meant filming in the Bahamas, New Zealand, South Carolina, Guernsey, New York and New England, it's only a small part of a lifestyle that is remarkably similar to his frenetic performance on the Channel 4 programme. For a start, there's his movie, Virtual Sexuality, a pounds 4m production by Columbia Tristar, due to hit the big screen next February. There's his agony aunt column for Just Seventeen; his Sun column; other film and television scripts; books and his weekly fishing programme, Dirty Tackle, on Radio 5 Live. (The latter, sadly, is at 6.05am on Saturdays, but Fisher has bumped up listening figures from 30,000 to 250,000.) It is an impressive cv for a man who was selling art deco furniture in Portobello Road, west London, not so long ago.

Fisher makes things happen. The victim of some dodgy dealing (yes, in the antiques trade), he found himself homeless and with nothing but two articles from a design magazine, only one of which bore his name. He reinvented himself as a freelance journalist and sold his talents to a new magazine called Just Seventeen. Eventually to his own agony uncle column, written from the male aspect.

He was so good at it that the Health Education Authority commissioned Fisher to write a book on safer sex, which attracted the wrath of Brian Mawhinney, then Health Minister, and was withdrawn because it was so controversial. "I was vilified and seen as the No 1 smutmonger," Fisher recalls.

But he's a man who attracts controversy. Many love his irreverent approach, breaking away from the sad-old-git- sitting-on-a-river-bank image that often characterises angling. Fisher showed that fishing can be fun and funny. Others dislike Screaming Reels because it's different and skips from one topic to another. Even Angling Times performed a hatchet job, accusing Fisher of not taking the sport seriously enough.

But to front two major angling programmes, attracting people such as George Melly and Fiona Armstrong, is a pretty good achievement for a Scottish kid who spent his formative years catching mackerel and cod off a Largs charter boat. He never fished in his teenage years. "One day in my 20s I woke up one morning, and I had to go fishing."

He went into John Wilson's tackle shop in Norwich (Wilson was not a television personality then) and bought a fly rod. "I had no idea how to use it. I went to Walthamstow reservoir and asked someone to show me how to cast."

Fisher made about 10 fruitless trips before he caught his first trout. But he was hooked. He was working with Channel 4 at the time and the idea of a angling programme arose. "I was disappointed with TV fishing at the time. I felt there was a lot of humour and amusing people in it, but this never came out."

He never intended to be the presenter, but Channel 4 rates precluded more glamorous candidates, the wacky approach put off others. "I like to think that it's made a difference," says Fisher. "I don't think world champion Bob Nudd would have made a record called 'Maggots in your Catapult' if Screaming Reels hadn't paved the way."

And people liked it. Each series has figured in Channel 4's top 20, and attracted audiences of between 1m and 1.5m.

The end? Not quite. Even as we talk, he's milling over a new approach, though he swears that he hates the filming bit because it is so stressful. One thing's for sure: if we see Fisher fishing on our screens again, it won't be anything ordinary.

l The final Screaming Reels is on Channel 4 on 3 July at 8pm.