Actor Paul Whitehouse's 'pride' in Welsh roots

Paul and Bob standing next to each other looking towards the camera. They are both holding a fishing rod and wearing a greyish coat. Both surrounded by bright green trees, white daises and a dark green river behind them.

Mortimer and Whitehouse visit Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire in the latest series of their BBC show Gone Fishing

Anaba Khan
BBC Wales

Actor and comedian Paul Whitehouse has described his pride in his Welsh roots, visiting the country he was born in and where his family was from.

Whitehouse, who was born in Stanleytown, Rhondda Cynon Taf, visited Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion with fellow comedian Bob Mortimer in the latest series of their BBC show Gone Fishing.

"I'm proud that I was born in the Rhondda Valley and that my family all come from there," he said.

Whitehouse, 67, lived in Wales until he was four before his family moved to Enfield, north London.

The eighth series of their show, during which Whitehouse and Mortimer travel around the UK on fishing trips, has two episodes set in Wales.

One sees the pair fish for trout in the Towy and Cothi rivers in Carmarthenshire – an area Whitehouse describes as "the Piccadilly Circus of the sea trout world" – while in another they fish unsuccessfully for tope, a rare type of shark, off the Ceredigion coast near Aberporth.

Asked by Mortimer if he thought of himself as Welsh, Whitehouse described it as "tricky", saying he had few memories because he left when he was four, but that he regularly visited the country on holidays, discussing his pride in his Welsh roots.

He described his dad working for the coal board, and his mum working in a chemist before becoming a singer.

In the Ceredigon episode, as the pair were looking out to sea, he said to Mortimer: "You brought me to the land of my father."

Paul sitting on the grass next to a green lake. There is a fish net and rod in a green plant bush. He is holding food in his hand. On the ground, there is a blue travel gas cooker, bronze coloured pot and a white cup near Paul's brown boots.

Whitehouse caught his first fish when he was seven in the River Usk

Whitehouse described the new series as "heartfelt" because they both visit places that are important to them.

"I think there's maybe an extra level of poignancy to this series," he said.

"I take Bob to a place that I fished with my dad, and fishing just always reminds me of my dad," he said of his father, who died in 2018.

"I do wonder, would I have been into fishing, if it hadn't been for my dad?"

In an earlier series, he described fishing on the River Usk with his father when he was young, catching his first fish there when he was seven.

At the end of that episode, in series two, he scatters his father's ashes into the Usk.

"This was the river he fished when he was a young bloke," he said.

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