To millions of telly addicts and armchair fishers, he’s known simply as The Accidental Angler.
But it’s no accident at all that we’ve just asked Charles Rangeley-Wilson to be a Patron of the Wandle Piscators.
And he assures us that he’s accepted our invitation quite intentionally, too – joining us at our Annual Dinner last Thursday (report from Duncan coming soon…) as well as the Wandle Trust’s Trout in the Classroom fry release in March.
“I’m Charles Rangeley-Wilson, and I’m a writer…” goes the voiceover at the start of every one of those AA episodes.
He’s a writer, all right. In fact he’s been writing about the Wandle for most of the last decade, heroically helping keep the river’s story current in the national press.
He brought the BBC cameras to capture several tonnes of photogenic rubbish coming out of the Trewint Street fly-tipping blackspot – grappling mopeds and dishwashers with the best of us for AA’s episode 4.
Since then, his Wandle articles have just kept appearing, most recently in The Field and The Telegraph.
Best of all, he finally fulfilled his magnificent obsession with catching a Wandle trout last summer, on location during an interview and photo-shoot for The Independent to mark the launch of The Accidental Angler‘s paperback edition. (No, you couldn’t make it up).
(Photo credit: David Sandison)
In our view, there’s no better Patron for a club full of anglers dedicated to chasing South London’s fishiest icons through the concrete jungle.
Officially, Charles – welcome to the crazy gang!