Guest
On 'Salmon Run', Charlton is presenter, tour guide and star, while Francis was director and producer. Along the way, Charlton encounters a wide range of characters along the river banks - from the Queen Mother’s ghilee at Balmoral to a shopkeeper in Lismore. He is equally at home with them all. He narrates the scenes with Attenboroughian gravitas. And, of course, he fishes. Sometimes he catches something, sometimes he doesn’t. His boundless love for the sport is instantly infectious. “This was Jack in his element. He knew the subject better than we did. He was so enthusiastic, like a kid. It was a joy to produce and direct,” Francis said on Monday. Unlike so much of the celeb filler that deadens TV these days, ‘Salmon Run’ is deeply immersed in its subject. Their expedition in Ireland took them up the Blackwater, the Corrib and the Moy. Charlton was arguably the most famous person in Ireland at the time - Francis can still recall the hordes of people who gathered near the salmon weir in Galway to watch Charlton cast - but Jack insisted in staying in bed and breakfasts. One morning, in a bed and breakfast in the ‘middle of nowhere’ in Galway, over breakfast, Charlton, Francis and the BBC production team were treated to an Irish step dancing session from the three daughters of the housekeeper. “Jack said to us ‘You don’t get that in a Holiday Inn,” Francis recalls. Fishing can be tedious business, as can television production, but it seems there was no better man to travel the world with. Francis recalls a meal in England with Charlton during filming, when a bolshie guest smashed a wine bottle against their table and threatened the group with violence. “Jack stood up and, calm as you like, said ‘C’mon behave yourself. There’s no need for that.’“ There are many lighter moments in the programme, including Charlton flirting with a Norwegian woman by the fireside after a fruitless day of fishing, but there’s plenty of philosophy in the programme as well. During one salmon expedition, Charlton explains why fishing excites him more than football. “People say to me ‘do you get excited at football matches? And I say no. Because when I watch a football match, I know what’s going wrong and know what’s going right. And I’m involved in the game. But it doesn’t excite me. I sometimes get a little bit angry. I watched a friend of mine Jock Stein die at a football match and I keep saying to people, ‘I will not die at a football match but I might on the river from a heart attack when I have a big drag on and they might find me down the river, but I’ll still be holding my rod’.” The river never took Jack Charlton, but it’s easy to imagine his soul there now, along the Tay or the Tweed or the Moy, reclining in the willows.
