Friends reunited
Paul baited pal Bob into casting a line after major heart surgery
AT TIMES of illness, it helps to be surrounded by old friends.
Comedians Paul Whitehouse and Bob Mortimer found comfort fishing together after both suffered from heart problems.
The experience has spawned a new TV show that starts next week.
Most importantly, it’s shown the recuperative power of hanging out with your pals.
WHEN Fast Show star Paul Whitehouse realised his friend Bob Mortimer was struggling with his health, he came up with the perfect idea to get him back in the real world – fishing.
Bob, 59, best known as one half of Reeves & Mortimer, had a triple heart bypass in 2015. Pain and fear after the op made the father of two retreat to the family home in Kent.
Paul, 60, had some understanding of Bob’s situation. He has had three stents inserted into his arteries to improve blood flow.
Paul said: “We are old friends, and we both had heart problems and heart disease.
“I was a bit more down the line of recovery when I found out about Bob and I was sort of designated stent buddy of the comedy world, wasn’t I?”
Bob added: “It was really nice of you, because I don’t go out or anything.
“I don’t think it was depression but for six months, you get all sorts of pains. Nearly every day you think you are having a heart attack but you just want to be at home.
“You forget it for a moment then feel something in your chest and you are so scared. I was frightened for six months and home felt safe.
“Paul knew it would be difficult to get me out and about, so he used this ruse.” This ruse is a six-part BBC2 series Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing The pair had talked about their shared hobby in the past and as they bonded over their catches, they wondered if there was a TV show in it. Paul said: “It’s something I’ve done since I was a kid. So we started going fishing and we enjoyed it and we thought it was quite a humorous idea – these two old idiots behaving like children.”
Even as themselves, Bob and Paul – who was Harry Enfield’s right-hand man and then created The Fast Show with Charlie Higson – are a comedy duo riot on the new series.
But fans of the pair’s hot comedies beware – this is two older guys musing about life, death and fishing on British riverbanks.
Episode two sees the pair talk about their own funerals after they walk through a graveyard on the way down to the river in Hay-on-Wye, Wales.
Father-of-four Paul said: “When you’re told that you’ve got heart disease – not that we
spend a lot of time agonising about it – it is there lurking at the back of your mind.”
His late father had heart problems and Paul found out he had blocked arteries when he was having treatment after a potentially fatal abscess.
While each episode has a sort of theme, the comics explain they wanted to do a show that comes out of a “genuine shared experience”.
Bob said: “We didn’t ever want there to be a voiceover to try to pretend that something happened, or that there was some reason for us going somewhere – so we had to kind of fill all that.
“The way to do it in other shows is you agree what you’re going to be saying. But we had nothing – this is really what two old blokes being friends is like.”
THE show is a great insight into their lives and it’s refreshing how open they are – particularly about their health.
When Bob was told he needed heart surgery because his arteries were 95 per cent blocked, it came out of the blue.
He said: “I went to the GP because I’d had the tiniest little distant pain just under my rib and my mam had always said, ‘You go cold on your chest’. Four days later, I was being sawn open.”
The comedian wed his partner of 22 years, Lisa Matthews – with whom he has two grown-up sons – on the morning of the op. Bob said: “The doctors do that speech, ‘There’s a very small chance that we...’ and the wife was waiting. I couldn’t speak, I just wanted to weep.”
For Paul, diagnosis of a heart problem was less of a shock. He said: “I was being monitored as a result of surgery I’d had. They saw this increase in hypertension and then I got this serious sort of blockage.”
He now does regular rehab exercise as a result.
“I have to explain to everyone in my family that I have to do that or I won’t be around, and, ‘If you want your inheritance, stop me, because I’m probably worth more dead!”’ he quipped.
“But I’m going to live for a little while.”
The pair have known each other for 30 years. Paul got his Equity card working on Vic and Bob’s early stage shows.
After his own success with The Fast Show, they teamed up with Vic and Bob’s Shooting Stars for a joint tour in the 90s.
Their fishing trips helped to rehabilitate Bob, who was able to go back on the road with Vic to do shows that had to be postponed because of the op.
And this month, Vic and Bob will record a new series of Big Night Out for the BBC.
Paul, meanwhile, teamed up with Enfield again for Harry and Paul and Story of the Twos and appeared in Armando Iannucci film The Death of Stalin.
Having gone through similar health issues, both admit it’s had an impact on their life even though they have returned to work.
“Cheese – you miss cheese a lot,” grinned Bob. “All those fats. That’s a change.”
Paul teased: “Bob’s fallen off the wagon though and gone back to the cheese, or are you not going to admit it?”
Bob confessed: “I had a Dairylea slice last night.”
Like his new TV partner in crime, Bob has also started exercising, something he never would have done before.
He said: “I run 1.4km a day. I don’t at the moment, I’ve just had a shoulder operation. It’s nice for two older fellas to chat about health because it’s all you do when you get older.”
“This is true,” agreed Paul. “In one episode, I say to you, ‘List your ailments from the toes up.’ He starts from his head down. I said, ‘No, toes up’ and what a catalogue of joy it is.”
Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing starts next Wednesday on BBC2 at 10pm.
This is really what two old blokes being friends is like BOB MORTIMER ON TV FISHING JAUNTS WITH PAUL WHITEHOUSE