Why we’ll always love Bob Mortimer – Teesside’s funniest son

If he pops up on Would I Lie To You? , Last One Laughing, or wanders into shot on Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing , you know you are about to get a story that starts small and ends in tears of laughter.

His tales have become the sort of thing people fire into WhatsApp chats with a simple: “You’ve got to watch this.”

The way he tells them

Plenty of comics tell daft stories. What makes Mortimer different is how real his nonsense feels.

Think about that hilarious self‑dentistry story on Would I Lie To You? . He talks about his teeth going wrong after a chocolate bar and calmly drifts into describing how he sorted it out himself, like he is chatting about putting up a shelf.

@uanddave Would you let Bob Mortimer in your mouth? #bobmortimer #wouldilietoyou #comedy #dentist Watch Would I Lie To You? on @UKTV Play ♬ original sound – U&Dave

You can see the panel wobbling between disbelief and total acceptance, because he throws in just enough everyday detail to make the madness sound possible.

It is the same with the Chris Rea bath tale, or the gaming‑chair saga, or the time he explains a run‑in with the police that should not make sense but somehow does.

He never rushes. He circles back, adds a tiny extra detail, and suddenly you realise you have leaned forward without noticing.

It feels less like a TV bit and more like listening to the best storyteller in the pub who has finally warmed up and started on the good stuff.

Fans talk about his episodes of WILTY as the ones they always click on first. You hear people say they have “lost an hour” rewatching his clips, because once you start on one story you end up jumping straight into another.

Why Gone Fishing hits differently

Then there is Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing , which feels like a completely different show until Bob opens his mouth and you realise it is the same brain at work, just with more sky and fewer studio lights.

On paper, it is two blokes by a river.

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In reality, it is long, daft conversations about nothing in particular that suddenly open up into something very honest about getting older and being scared.

You get the wobbly walks along the bank, the dafter moments when he ends up on his backside or arguing with a camping chair, but you also get those pauses where he and Paul Whitehouse talk very plainly about heart surgery and what comes after.

The switches between clowning and vulnerability feel natural rather than forced.

It is exactly how a day out with an old mate often goes: serious for five minutes, then completely stupid again.

That is why people lean on Bob when life feels heavy.

A Teesside voice in a national spotlight

Through all of this, Mortimer has never sounded like he has drifted away from where he started.

The way he describes streets, neighbours and jobs feels very recognisable if you grew up anywhere in the North East.

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There is a particular rhythm to how he talks about stupid decisions, daft plans and old cars that belongs to this part of the world.

That is why younger viewers who find him through clipped‑up WILTY stories or short Gone Fishing moments often end up digging back through older work like Shooting Stars .

They are not just stumbling across a random panel‑show regular. They are discovering someone whose voice carries a whole region with it, even when he is talking about something as daft as improvised dentistry or a spa day gone wrong.

Why the clips never die

In an internet full of things you only watch once, Mortimer’s stories are oddly rewatchable.

The punchline is never the only point.

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You come back for the way he sets it up, the way his face goes serious just as the story goes ridiculous, and the way everyone around him slowly falls apart.

Even when you know where his dentistry tale is heading, you still want to hear how he gets there. The same is true of Gone Fishing .

In the end, that is why the love for Bob Mortimer keeps bouncing back every time a clip resurfaces.

He brings proper oddness into the most ordinary settings, but never sneers at the people or places in his stories.

He sounds like a Teesside neighbour, behaves like the funniest person in your friendship group, and somehow turns dental cement, motorway lay‑bys and quiet riverbanks into part of the country’s shared in‑jokes.

For a lot of readers here, he will always be that lad from Middlesbrough who made it big and never stopped sounding like one of us.