A wop bop a loo bop a lop bam boom

As he prepares for another season on the fly, our correspondent considers what it is about fishing that has long enthralled the great and the good-from Coco Chanel to US presidents, Robert Redford and Eric Clapton

- Glyn Satterley

IT used to be claimed that, in its heyday, the Daily Express was read by everyone from 'a Duke to a dustman'. And, indeed, back when I was briefly its Fishing Correspondent, I fished with both, although never simultaneously. I'm no social anthropologist, but there must similarly be something remarkable about angling for it to have a history of such broad appeal-from Izaak Walton (ironmonger) to Augustus Caesar (emperor) encompassing on the way Coco Chanel, Chekhov, Charlie Chaplin, Billy Connolly, Bing Crosby and Fidel Castro. I wonder, however, do certain professions seem to have a particular affinity with river and loch?

The impish 'BB'-author of that classic The Little Grey Men-certainly thought so, proposing in a splendid period piece that 'Hairdressers are perhaps the most prone to a love of fishing' and 'Bream fishers are usually big, flat-footed men: retired constables and railwaymen'. Let us consider some categories of similar vocational 'typecasting'.