You don’t necessarily need to agree with someone to get on with them, writes Phil Hill.
That’s a lesson I learned over lunch with Charlie Jacoby.
Many years ago, I had worked with his mother, who was one of those people no one had a bad word to say about.
Charlie was equally charming, although his job is sure to raise the odd eyebrow.
But first things first.
He was born in Cheltenham, where his father taught at Cheltenham College boys' school.
The family moved to Somerset when Charlie was two after his father was appointed head of science at Taunton School.
"Unfortunately, he was sacked when he divorced my mother," said Charlie.
"I attended Pyrland Hall - (now King’s College Prep School) - and went on to Sherborne School."
He briefly attended London University, but then entered the world of publishing.
He added: "My job was writing, and I was a ghost writer from 18 to 21, including writing Lord Lichfield’s biography.
"[The publisher] Simon and Schuster asked me to go to South Africa during the Rugby World Cup in 1995.
"I spent a lot of time there with former England rugby player Peter Winterbottom, who was a really nice person, and Derek Pringle, who played cricket for England.
"It resulted in the book 'In Search of Will Carling,' who was the England rugby captain at the time."
After that, Charlie became an editor rather than a writer for various magazines, particularly about the world of shooting.
"When Facebook was launched in 2004, it spoiled everything," said Charlie.
"Magazines had been popular until then, but after Facebook, they became irrelevant.
"Then in 2008, I met David Wright, an ITV news producer.
"We had this idea that we could deliver hunting and shooting issues.
"Unlike football, there were issues that weren’t tied up with TV rights.
"Together, we presented ideas and Fieldsports Channel went live on Wednesday, August 12, 2009, and has come out every Wednesday at 7pm ever since."
Fieldsports Britain has since built an international reach and is particularly big in China.
Once the two men decided to broadcast on YouTube, things really took off in what Charlie calls "the Artemis moment".
In terms of audience, a shooting magazine might be reaching 5,000, but the broadcast is hitting a million a month.
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He added: "The show is about half an hour a week.
"David presents the show, which has five or six packages, and I do the links and voice overs.
"It’s about, ‘This is what I think - you don’t have to think that at all, but if you’re still watching, then it works.
"Last year, YouTube went ahead of ITV and is set to overtake the BBC sometime soon.
"Our access to audiences is unbelievable and its worldwide.
"We had 12.75m individual viewers in 2025 and 35m total views."
Initially, the broadcasts were funded by advertising, but nowadays costs are met through membership fees.
"We’re not just live - we also offer video on demand," said Charlie, who lives in the Wellington area.
"We’re a team of about ten, producing five or so items a week between us.
"We used to get dozens of death threats.
"I rang up one person once who said their threats were ‘metaphysical’ rather than real.
"We have a huge rainbow of possibilities looking at all the things people do in the countryside every weekend - carp, trout and tuna fishing, shooting sports, all the hunting sports, deer stalking, pheasant and pigeon shooting.
"We look at the city broker in tweeds, the gamekeeper collecting pheasant eggs, pest control shooting foxes, vermin control.
"We’ve done a piece on big game hunters going to a church service in Vienna.
"It’s not all ‘rich toffs'.
"If the BBC had put fox hunting on TV instead of football and darts, they’d be charging transfer fees now."
Charlie, who is married with three children and six chickens, visits South Africa once a year to report on the popular hunting activities there.
He said: "We’ve been everywhere except Antarctica.
"There are very few countries in the world where hunting and field sports have been banned.
"At one stage, we were the second most-watched TV show after Downton Abbey."
That would have made for an interesting conversation with his old school chum Hugh Bonneville, who played the Earl of Grantham in the popular series.
Charlie still does a magazine for a client in London and writes articles for the Telegraph.
He added: "Our campaigning edge has been sharpened by this government, which wants to end a lot of things we hold dear.
"A lot of people have tried to end hunting and shooting over time, but it’s no use - you just can’t ban it.
"It will be difficult to ban trail hunting as Labour want to do.
"They don’t like hunting, shooting and fishing.
"That’s fine, but their efforts will end in failure."
In a high-profile court case, wildlife campaigner Chris Packham successfully sued the Fieldsports Channel for libel after it wrongly accused him of dishonestly faking an anonymous death threat letter sent to him.
"That changed what we did that year," said Charlie.
"It turned us into a campaigning organisation."
