Fishing Lines: Boogie nights with Gorgeous George the great showman

Darned inconvenient, George Melly dying. Means I've got to think of someone else to present the awards at this year's Angling Writers' Association prizegiving. Every scribbler who turned up to our conference in Somerset in 2001 still reckons that Gorgeous George was the best speaker we've ever had.

A jazz singer might seem a strange choice to entertain a shoal of fishing journalists. But Melly's book 'Hooked! Fishing Memories' had just come out, and everyone was fascinated to meet a man who confessed in print that he had masturbated over a trout.

I faced a further concern. We were eating tuna. What would George get up to with a few whiskies inside him? Fortunately he was on his best behaviour (outrageous) and the fish, even the ones we caught the following day, went unsullied (or should that be unmellied?).

Wisely, I also took a friend's advice when he said: "Don't try to upstage George Melly. Can't be done." I just introduced him, white suit, fedora and all. He was, as you might expect, terrific. We were helped by the fact that, away from the bright lights, he loved to fish.

George owned a home on the banks of the River Usk, and loved to fling a fly. Then 74, he wasn't the last person to leave the bar (come on: I'm a Fleet Street journalist from the old days; there are some traditions that need preserving) but he wasn't far off it. He certainly outpaced most of the younger members.

He just wanted to talk fishing; we wanted to talk George Melly. He wanted to talk the technicalities of presenting a nymph; we wanted to find out about some of the nymphs who had decorated his life. He was indiscreet, insulting and very funny. It was a great night.

We didn't know, and nor did George (though he probably had an inkling), that a few months later he would be diagnosed with lung cancer and vascular dem-entia, a condition which affects the brain after small strokes.

Didn't seem to slow him up. In January, he collapsed and was taken to hospital. But he was still appearing on stage in the weeks leading up to his death. "I would rather death came as a shock to me," he said. "I've always said I wanted to die either coming off stage with applause in my ears, or of a terminal stroke on a river bank with two trout by my side."

Pity we couldn't fix the latter. That would have been a story, if his life had ended the day after our conference, a smile on his face and two Irfon trout by his side. I'd like to set up a George Melly memorial award, though it would probably be for writing rather than for abusing fish.

So who's going to replace him? Shouldn't be hard. We just need a larger-than-life celebrity with a great sense of humour who's a brilliant speaker, a mad-keen angler, able to drink until 5am and be prepared to leap out of bed a few hours later, fish all day in torrential rain and say: "That was great!"

Oh, and did I mention that there's no fee?