Paul Whitehouse: Our Troubled Rivers

Aren’t rivers brilliant?

Not only are healthy waterways vital for biodiversity and for human health and well-being, they provide habitats for a range of wildlife, protect against flooding and are beautiful places for recreation and reflection.

Therefore, it is vital that we protect them, and one of the most vocal campaigners for the protection or the UK’s rivers is Fast Show comedian Paul Whitehouse.

The 64-year-old has been filming Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing alongside his friend Bob Mortimer since 2018.

And although the pair’s adventures have been a massive hit with viewers, it’s safe to say that hygiene and cleanliness isn’t always their top priority.

In fact, back in 2019, Paul revealed that he sometimes has to poo in the river when he is filming.

“I don’t want to be too graphic about this,” the lifelong fisherman said.

“But one of the problems you have, especially when wearing waders, is getting enough distance between the orifice and the trouser.

“So one of the ways around this is to find a nice branch, good height – about five feet off the ground – so you can sort of hang and keep your legs out.”

Despite this admission, Paul is angry about the “parlous state of our rivers”, and made it clear who he blames on LBC’s Tonight with Andrew Marr last month.

Labelling the discharge of raw sewage into the UK’s waterways “shocking” and “a disgrace”, Paul said: “The main protagonist and the villain of the piece here, in many instances, is the policy of the water companies.”

In the past, Paul has also been particularly vocal about the problem of water extraction.

“We do see the decline in the rivers,” he said at the Cheltenham Literature Festival a few years ago.

“You get the impression that most of our rivers are cleaned up since industrial decline and the irony is that a lot of our rivers have got better. But in recent years, in the last 10 or 20 years, there has been a serious decline in a lot of our rivers through water abstraction.”

In this two-part programme, Paul travels around England and Wales looking at the pressures affecting our rivers and waterways from water companies, intensive agriculture and growing population.

He explores what is going on beneath the surface, why they are in decline and what needs to be done to protect them.

In the first edition, Paul travels through the north of England, looking at the impact those companies are having on our rivers.

He considers the changes in the water industry since privatisation in 1989 and what regulations are in place when it comes to sewage discharge.

He meets concerned locals in Yorkshire looking to highlight the health of the River Wharfe, as well as a conservationist who warns of the ecological decline in the iconic Lake Windemere.

He also meets up with fellow fisherman and the main man at the front of the battle for our waterways, Undertones vocalist Feargal Sharkey.

“There is not a single river in England that is not polluted – not one,” the Northern Irishman has previously said.

Perhaps now is not a good time to point out his friend occasionally uses the river as a toilet, then.