John Wilson, fisherman voted ‘The Greatest Angler of All Time’ – obituary

John Wilson, who has died aged 75, made angling hugely popular with his enthusiasm for the sport in the long-running Anglia Television series Go Fishing, broadcast from 1986 to 2002; he was voted “The Greatest Angler of All Time” in a 2004 poll by readers of the Angling Times newspaper.

The series – 108 half-hour episodes altogether – featured the bearded and irrepressibly chuckling Wilson waxing lyrical about grayling, roach, dace and bream – or, as one reviewer put it unkindly, “whooping and dancing for joy after pulling some miserable old tench or whatever out of a muddy Norfolk ditch”.

Viewers were introduced to techniques ranging from centre-pin fishing to artificial lure fishing, and from…