The nickname "Wild Bill" may sound like a marketing concoction for the rough-and-tumble Discovery Channel series "Deadliest Catch" (9 tonight), but to hear 1975 Norwin High School grad Bill Wichrowski tell it, the moniker fits.

"I was supposed to go to Slippery Rock for business administration, but homecoming night I ran my dad's brand new Buick -- it still had the sticker on the car -- through a cemetery and hit a tombstone and a tree," he said. After angering his father, he decided to change his plans. "I ended up joining the Navy and going to the West Coast."

Since then, the Westmoreland City native supervised a shipyard, spent 20 years fishing the Bering Sea until semi-retiring in 2005 and most recently he ran sportfishing tours off the coast of Mexico. When the economy went belly up, interest in high-end fishing expeditions began to dry up, too.

"The money's not what it used to be so I wanted to combine it with something else," Mr. Wichrowski, 52, said by phone last week from Dutch Harbor, Alaska, where his boat had just come in from a season that harvested 1.4 million pounds of snow crabs. "So I contacted Discovery. I wanted to be on the show to get recognition."

His goal is to parlay that notoriety back into his sportfishing business.

"I hope to fish every ocean on the planet before I pass," he said. "There's sportfishing everywhere -- Australia, New Zealand, Africa."

Mr. Wichrowski's brother, Chuck, who operates Baum Blvd. Automotive in North Oakland, said producers had initially asked Bill to appear in the show early in its run, but he declined before acquiescing this season.

"He told us about what he did but it was interesting to see exactly what he did when the show first came on," said Chuck Wichrowski, a "Deadliest Catch" viewer who will be tuning in this season to watch his brother. "It will be some of the best home movies you ever could have."

Tonight's "Deadliest Catch" introduces viewers to Bill Wichrowski, his crew (including a son, Zach, the greenest crew member), and the boat he captains, the Kodiak.

"Crap rolls downhill, as they say, and this time at the bottom of the hill is my kid," Wild Bill says on the show, moments before a potentially serious accident occurs. "Day One, near miss. I guess, welcome back to crabbin', huh?"

This season "Deadliest Catch" will also deal with the February death of one of the show's regulars, Phil Harris, captain of the Cornelia Marie.

"He wasn't the most flamboyant one, but he had a following," said Mr. Wichrowski, a friend for many years. "He was a good guy."

Although crab fishing wasn't a new experience, working while being filmed took an adjustment period.

"The first [fishing] season, it was a little strange having guys with cameras in your face. You react a little different," Mr. Wichrowski said, but he's spoken to the show's editors and they assure him by the end of the King Crab fishing season, he's back to being himself and ignoring the cameras.

Mr. Wichrowski said he twice met with producers before filming, "and they decided to hang the name 'Wild Bill' on me" after he told them stories from his past of staying awake for four days at a time to drive a crab boat. Not that it was a new nickname. His brother, Chuck, said people have been using the nickname since high school.

"There's a history to the name 'Wild Bill,' " Bill Wichrowski acknowledged. "There's a reason for it."

One gets the impression his joyride through Union Cemetery in Irwin may be just the beginning of the stories he could tell.

TV columnist Rob Owen's Tuned In+ is featured exclusively on PG+, a members-only web site from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.