Jeremy Wade

That's a no brainer. Of course an alligator-gar sized goldfish. Tell me where it is. Even better if it's a saber-toothed goldfish.

I was threatened by a drunken man with a gun in Brazil because I was talking to his ex-girlfriend. And that was a very tense situation for a few days. It was very tricky, I didn't want to back down in response to a threat, so I carried on talking to his ex-girlfriend but I took to carrying a pipe wrench around with me just in case. Which made my shorts sort of sag, in a very interesting manner. And I practiced (not that I'm saying you should hit somebody with a pipe wrench) throwing it short distances.

Yes I have, it's very disturbing.

A very big problem is in many parts of the world people have to eat the fish out of the river, and the rivers can't really take the pressure with population growth. So, for example, in the Amazon, there is a lot of subsistence and commercial fishing, and it's had a real impact on fish numbers and sizes. But it's hard to tell people in places like that not to eat fish out of the river because they don't have many other sources of food. There's also pollution, and dams actually are a big issue. The good news is that with rivers, normally the jurisdiction is more clear cut than it is in the ocean, so maybe it's just one country or two countries that have to sort out some policy. And I think a good example of a river that has come back to life partially would be the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest which used to have large numbers of big sturgeon which almost disappeared and which have now come back in the lower reaches thanks to a concerted policy.

I mean, the first thing to say is that you have Tigerfish, and then you have Goliath Tigerfish, which is the man-sized one that lives in the Congo. I think it probably is the ultimate river monster. In terms of the way it looks, it certainly is. Nobody forgets that once they've seen it. And it almost looks like something out of science fiction. It's almost a combination of biology and engineering. But the one that scares me the most is probably the electric eel. Because if you happen to bump into one, a big one can product 500 or 600 volts. That's enough to paralyze your muscles and if you fall face down in the water you can drown. And if someone comes to help you they can get zapped as well. And that's why when we were making the film about them, the crew had a very long wooden poll with a hook at the end in case anything happened to me, and a defibrillator.

Oh! I quite like Arapaima. Although in Guyana, I think, because they are now protected there, in other places they tend to get netted and speared. But there, they are quite intelligent fish. They are able to breathe air, so if their home dries out and gets a bit stagnant, they live through that until the water comes back again.

There is a fish, it's a relative of the pacu, which is a fish we have featured, and this fish is called the Tambaqui, it lives in the Amazon and lives on a diet of totally organic high protein nuts and seeds that fall from trees. The flesh is amazing. The best way is freshly caught over just cooked over embers, sizzling in its own fat, with a little bit of salt.

I would say the great thing 'bout fishing is that you can have adventures right on your doorstep. You can make discoveries, because underwater is another world, you don't have to go halfway round the earth. I still get a kick out of fishing small ponds near my home, although I don't get time to do it. But the feeling is sort of the same.

A pleasure!

Well, the time when our sound recordist was hit by lightning in Suriname, in South America. That was a very intense few seconds there. And for a few moments, we feared the worst. We saw a motionless body in the bottom of the boat, and it took a little while to establish that he was going to be okay.

I go scuba diving to look at fish, but it's maybe not a surprise? I do a little bit of yoga. And embroidery. Just joking.