Jeremy Wade: the underwater detective hunting river monsters

Jeremy Wade might agree with the verdict of poet Ted Hughes that fishing "provides a connection with the whole living world". Wade is, after all, a man who has been chased down the street in Colombia by fans of his show who wanted his autograph.

Wade's popularity is based on his splendid River Monsters television programme, which is the most watched show on America's Animal Planet channel.

The fifth season of River Monsters is showing on ITV at present and tomorrow Wade begins a UK tour of his show in theatres across Britain.

For a man who catches some of the toughest fish in the world – the Goliath Tiger Fish of Congo is a pretty tricky customer but some of that is down to the problems of getting to where they can be caught – his fishing beginnings were inauspicious. He was given a fishing rod when he was about seven and spent a frozen morning by a river in Suffolk without catching anything. Happily, a school friend subsequently showed him a few tricks, sparking a lifelong interest in fishing.

Wade knows how to capture the imagination of his television audience and some of that skill, he believes, is down to the time he spent as a teacher. The Zoology graduate taught biology in Faversham, Kent, as well as working as a supply teacher in London. The work gave him a broad knowledge and instilled a scientific way of looking at things. It also taught him that if you want to engage your audience then it was best "not to just spout facts or drone. You have to give a performance, it's about grabbing and holding attention," he says. He adds, with a laugh, "teaching wasn't for me in the end, as it happens, too much hard work and no social life."

At 57, Wade has a hectic schedule, with new TV shows, occasional writing work and bags of travelling. But it took time and dedication to get to the stage of his career when he was asked to be a guest on The Tonight Show

On the way, Wade had spells in advertising and lived pretty frugally (no car, sleeping on friends' sofas) to save the money for trips to far-flung places to fish in dramatic locations. It was on a trip to India that he saw the potential for a TV programme that showed fish which did not normally got a look in on TV.

He took some advice from a friend to make his first show (about India's frightening and large cat fish) "an underwater detective story". Thus River Monsters was born. Getting the show commissioned was, he says, "a bit like fishing in right place . . . I had to dangle some bait and wait for a bit of luck."

It started as a one-off show on Channel 5 and is now an established worldwide series, with season five currently showing and two more in preparation. The programme has taken Wade, who speaks Portuguese and French, to some dangerous places. Although he does his homework, he says you can't prepare for all eventualities (such as being bitten by a strange insect and having your foot swelling up to he size of a football) or getting a bacterial infection of the face. At the start, there were unpleasant illnesses and many digestive problems. "Now I have a cast-iron constitution," he says. "I've not had a single day off for six years. All that Amazon water must have given me a good immune system."

The most scary experience was being on a single engine plane in the Amazon that ran into trouble and crashed. "It happened so quickly, time shrank like a compressed computer file," he says of his narrow escape. Wade is remarkable sanguine about his dangerous escapades. He has also escaped drowning and has been threatened at gunpoint, not to mention being rammed in the chest by a six-foot Arapaima.

Part of the appeal of the show is that Wade retains such a calm and modest demeanour as he talks about taking on such deadly creatures. Would you want to go in a tank full of Piranha, or face up to a Bull shark?

What about in UK, I wonder. Do we have anything remotely troubling in our watery depths? "English coastal waters have Weaver fish with venomous spines," he says. "And even river chub have hidden teeth in the back of their throats that could bite you, but the amazing creatures are elsewhere."

^{Jeremy Wade gets the measure of a stingray on the Paraná River in Argentina}

Wade also enjoys the quest to find scientific answers. A recent programme was about the Loch Ness monster. "I was trying to find whether there was anything large enough in the loch to explain why people believe in the monster," he explains.

Wade is keenly aware that he is working in a changing world. As he put it: "I understand that people have to get their food but the size and numbers of fish has declined badly in the past 50 years. Fishing in the Amazon is now big and sophisticated and some big fish have all but disappeared. And the season floods in tropical places are more unpredictable with an effect on river levels. In the past five to seven years seasonal rise and fall of river levels far more unpredictable and this can damage species such as River Turtles in Guyana when they lay their eggs. But things can be done. In the Colombia river in North West American sturgeon have been brought back when it was feared they were on the verge of extinction."

One thing that doesn't change is the inherent interest in fishing and finding out about the world. "Children actually like ugly fish," Wade says, "and they liked being scared (up to a point). In sport fishing programmes all the fish are very pretty but in my shows we are chasing monsters. Seeking the truth about monsters, even those that live in rivers, taps into something deep, like a fairytale element."

Jeremy Wade's River Monsters UK tour starts on Saturday 8March. For ticket and venue details see www.rivermonsters.tv/. The River Monsters episode Vampires of the deep is on ITV on Sunday 9 March at 12.30pm