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'.

There is a lively tradition of British royalty being as keen as knives on rod and line, beginning with Charles II in the company of his Nell, via George IV assiduously floatfishing the Serpentine, then the late Queen Mother, to our present monarch, an adept aficionado of cane rods and Scottish streams. Moving on to the political class: sporting dictators include Nero, Franco and Putin, whereas American Presidents make a strong showing FDR pursued marlin, Carter liked flydressing and I once encountered George Bush père on the bonefish flats. Sir Edward Grey (Foreign Secretary) was famously a fisher, as were J. W. Hills MP and Earl Home. Nigel Farage apparently likes the occasional cast (perhaps it's his fondness for spin), although our present Premier seems not to have been tempted by the College stretch of the Itchen at Winchester and (despite her moniker) the idea of Ms Sturgeon strapped into a fighting chair makes me spill my Horlicks.