04/09/2026
🩷🤍💚
“The only voice in my life telling me to get out of the house was Paul Whitehouse,” Bob later said. Gone Fishing exists because Paul Whitehouse could see that his mate was in trouble.
In 2015, Bob Mortimer had triple heart bypass surgery. His body began to recover, but once he got home, something else took over.
Bob became frightened of going outside.
He stopped answering calls and spent much of the next month hiding away from people. Friends tried to reach him, but he didn’t want to see anyone.
Paul Whitehouse kept calling anyway.
Paul knew a little about what Bob was going through. He had suffered heart problems himself and had three stents fitted. He also knew that telling Bob to cheer up or pull himself together would be no use.
So he came up with a simple plan.
He took him fishing.
There was no idea for a television series at this point. No cameras were waiting beside the river. Paul was simply trying to get his friend out of the house.
Bob went along, and those quiet fishing trips began to help.
Sitting beside the water gave them time to talk properly. They spoke about their health and the things they worried about. Bob began sharing parts of his life that he had rarely spoken about before.
It’s often easier to open up when you’re doing something else. You don’t have to sit across a table and stare at each other. You can look at the water, wait for a fish and let the words come when they’re ready.
Bob has said that Paul played a huge part in his mental recovery. He described him as an “extraordinarily lovely human being” who brought him back into the world “under the guise of fishing.”
Those trips later became Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing.
The show is funny, of course. Bob and Paul cook, bicker and wander through some lovely places. Yet the reason people care about it goes much deeper than fishing.
It is about two friends getting older and being honest about their health. Most of all, it shows what can happen when someone notices you are struggling and refuses to quietly disappear.
Viewers often tell them that the programme pushed them to get their hearts checked or speak to someone about how they were feeling.
And it all began with Paul saying, in effect: come on, mate. Let’s get out of the house.
Sometimes that is what real friendship looks like.
Has someone ever helped you through a bad time simply by refusing to give up on you? ❤️
