| PROFESSOR BARRIE RICKARDS | |
He is President of the Specialist Anglers’ Alliance and the Lure Angling Society. Barrie has been a keen angler all his life and wrote the classic book ‘Fishing For Big Pike’ with co-author Ray Webb. He takes a keen and active interest in angling politics. |
BBC – Anti Angling?
There has been some interesting writing during the last couple of months or so, raising all manner of issues, so I’d be interested to hear what you think of them. One of the issues has been that of angling on terrestrial TV or, rather, the lack of it. A letter has appeared in several angling magazines from a TV producer, Gelly Morgan, castigating the terrestrial channels for turning up their noses at John Wilson’s successful angling series. When criticism comes from a TV producer, and a successful one at that, it carries a little bit more weight than if the remarks come from someone like myself. Even so, I’ve said it before, and I’ll do so again: the BBC in particular is opposed to angling; not just to angling on TV, but to angling. That they cannot see the quality of John Wilson’s programmes would be almost beyond belief – until you realise that it matters not what they quality is, just as long as it is angling they have no interest. No, that is wrong: they are opposed to it.
Almost every utterance from the BBC, over many years, has demonstrated both its ignorance of and its opposition to angling. And what the BBC says does tend to spill over into the whole of the chattering classes/caf
