Even the toughest can love our sport

As you’ll no doubt be aware, a greatly extended Take a Friend Fishing scheme is about to kick off for the summer, and I can’t wait!

We’ve already enjoyed two weeks of TAFF in July, and that spell gave me the opportunity to test a theory that even the hardest nut can be cracked with a spot of gentle fishing.

And they don’t come much tougher than Mark ‘Billy’ Billingham MBE, a guy many of you will recognise from Channel 4’s SAS Who Dares Wins TV show.

Billy used to fish when he was younger, but his distinguished military career, body-guarding, and TV work over the last three decades has not given him a lot of time to enjoy our sport.

We’re both patrons of a military charity called Phoenix Heroes and planned to meet up to talk about promotion work. But he was also the perfect candidate for a quick trip to reintroduce him to fishing – TAFF isn’t just about taking kids to the bank.

Being former SAS, he lives near Hereford with the River Wye on his doorstep, so we headed to a beautiful stretch run by Angling Dreams, based in Ross-on-Wye.

He loved it. Like many of us, from whatever walk of life or career we chose to follow, life can be 100 miles an hour with not a lot of downtime. He said a few times that a trip to the river was exactly what he needed to just chill out and relax. We all know that feeling! There’s no question that he ‘got it’ and a return trip is definitely on the cards... exactly what TAFF is all about.

Rob Hughes and Mark Billingham with a Wye chub