A PUNK rocker is nothing without his anger, and Feargal Sharkey, former lead singer of The Undertones, is furious. Sitting beside the sparkling River Lea at Amwell Magna Fishery, with a cuckoo distantly keeping the beat, it is hard to find anything to be even vaguely irritated about, let alone seething. Indeed Sharkey, welcoming and enormously engaging, doesn't seem at all cross. This is because the idyllic scene we are enjoying now has been achieved through the positive, planned application of anger.
Sharkey explains: "When I got involved with the Amwell Magna Fishery club I discovered that the flow of the River Lea here had all but dried up. It was suffering the effects of over-abstraction and eutrophication. Two and a half miles of rare and beautiful chalkstream were in danger of turning into little more than a stagnant ditch. And this was the last remaining stretch where there was a spawning population of wild brown trout."
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Rory Stewart - The former Cabinet minister and hit podcast host talks to Alec Marsh about the parlous state of British politics, land management and his deep love of the countryside
The gently spoken 51-year-old former Conservative Cabinet minister is a countryman at heart. That's clear: he even changes into a tweed waistcoat for the interview, which takes place at his London home and begins with a question about his precise career status. Having resigned from the Commons and the Conservative Party in 2019, the former diplomat and soldier has reinvented himself, first with an unconventional but promising run as an independent for the London mayoralty (abandoned because of COVID19 in 2020) and then as a media figure, co-hosting one of the country's most popular podcasts, The Rest Is Politics, alongside Alastair Campbell, the former Labour spin doctor.
Fodder
Local fare with the feel-good factor.
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