Chris Tarrant . . . gone fishing

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The fishing isn’t just a peripheral interest for Chris Tarrant, it is a major obsession – a real passion.
“It started when my granddad took me fishing on the Thames for perch when I was about four. I was hooked for life.” Chris keeps a straight face as he delivers the pun. “And my dad was a keen fisherman as well, so I have always fished.

“I can’t imagine my life without fishing. I have met lots of people who have become really good, close friends over 30 or 40 years. Ingrid says that most of my mates only ever talk about fishing, but I think that’s good! Surely better than talking about television and radio and the rather unreal world I inhabit for a living. So, most of my mates - my hard-core mates - are fishermen.

“I just love it all. I fish on the rivers in this country a lot. I fish on the Kennet a lot, I fish on the Avon a lot. There’s always some sort of fishing rod in my car, telescopic or whatever, so if I’m filming for a couple of weeks, well, if I get finished early in the evening I can just drive off and fish. There’s always somewhere you can go, and it just chills me out.”

So, an experienced angler must have some great traditional style fisherman’s tales, mustn’t he? “I’ve caught some very big carp. I caught a 30 pound carp in 1976 when nobody was catching big carp. That was a huge fish and I caught two of them that year, and it was unheard of. They’re a lot more common now.”
Chris hits his stride, and tales of the hunt emerge with great enthusiasm.
“The biggest fish I ever caught on rod and line was a 200 pound halibut off the west coast of Canada. It was like playing the monster of the deep and it just beat me up - completely beat me up - for about an hour and a half. My body, my biceps, my chest, were literally battered black and blue. In the end I didn’t particularly want the 200 pound halibut, but I thought, ‘I am not going to let this bloody thing go’!”

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