PROFILE
As frontman of The Undertones, Feargal Sharkey belted out some of the most iconic hits of the 1970s. Now, he’s using his voice to amplify the plight of our beleaguered rivers
Feargal Sharkey, former Undertones frontman, was 11 when he took up the hobby that was to change his life – fly-fishing. “I can, with some certainty, point the finger at the Christian Brothers and go, ‘It was their fault,’” he says of the strict teachers who ran his school and its fly-fishing club. Feargal, who grew up in Derry, would often hop on a bus to the confluence of the rivers Mourne and Finn to catch salmon.
Today, certain people responsible for looking after our rivers may well blame the Christian Brothers. For it is Feargal’s love of fly-fishing that led him to become a thorn in their side. The former singer’s new gig is to amplify the scandal of sewage in, and excessive draining of, our rivers. His audience is everyone from the man in the street to the powers-that-be at Westminster.
RIVER RAGE
Only 14 per cent of the 1,500 rivers in England are in good ecological condition and, unless there is significant intervention, this figure could fall to six per cent in four years’ time. Until Feargal came along, this was rarely acknowledged. Now it dominates the news. But Feargal never set out to be the poster boy for clean rivers. Back in 2015, he was just trying to protect the River Lea at the Amwell Magna Fishery, in Hertfordshire, where he fished. He knew the Lea was stagnating and, as the club’s new chairman, discovered the fishery had been in conversation about it with the Environment Agency – the government body created to protect the environment in England – since 1997.
After his years on stage, Feargal had been a record label boss. He was used to getting things done. In the record industry, you have a week to propel a song into the Top 40. Since 1997, more than 900 weeks had gone by. Little had been achieved. A report, produced in 2003, had found the river had been over-abstracted (when too much water has been removed from a river). The solution was ignored. “I was not prepared to let this fantasy go on,” Feargal says. He put together a case to take the Environment Agency to the High Court, with help from Fish Legal, a body set up to use the law to protect our rivers. At the last minute, the Environment Agency struck a deal. They would fix the situation after all.
CAUGHT IN THE FLOW
We meet today at the Amwell Magna, with its babbling waters and lush green banks. “It’s a godsend having this bit of space to come to,” Feargal says. Martin, who looks after the land, is hoping to see the water vole, who usually pops out for his daily apple core. Ratty is on other business but, as consolation, Martin shows me a video of a resident grass snake eating a s
