Fly Fishing by J.R. Hartley

One of my funniest TV memories from the 1980s is a Jasper Carrott sketch where he plays a bookseller in a bookshop surrounded by copies of Fly Fishing by J.R. Hartley. If memory serves me right (annoyingly, I can’t find it online), every single book in the shop is the Fly Fishing book. A customer comes in and asks for the book. Jasper Carrott scratches his head, looks around, and says ‘No, sorry’. Jasper Carrott wasn’t the only one to spoof the ad; so did A Bit of Fry and Laurie and Hale and Pace.

The spoofs, of course, are of the famous Yellow Pages ad from 1983 where an elderly gentleman trudges from bookshop to bookshop searching in vain for Fly Fishing by J.R. Hartley. Eventually he gets a copy, after his daughter suggests using the Yellow Pages, and it’s revealed he is in fact J.R. Hartley.

Actually the book and author were fictional, until some eight years later when angling author Michael Russell decided to release a book called Fly Fishing under the pseudonym J.R. Hartley. Though the book came out years after the ad, it’s a testimony to the popularity of the ad that the book was the Christmas bestseller in 1991.

The ad was give reboot in 2011 with a younger, slightly hipper dad, an ex-DJ looking through record shops for a trance mix he’d recorded in the 1990s; his daughter comes to the rescue with the Yell app on her smartphone.

Another example of serendipity in the Oxfam bookshop, Truro; I was talking about the Yellow Pages ad to various volunteers one day recently (most people seemed to know – apart from me – the book didn’t exist until after the advert); the next day it turned up. £4.99 if you want it.

Previously on Barnflakes
Recent Oxfam Bookshop Barngains
Second hand serendipity
This afternoon in the bookshop
Echoes of mirrors