[1] He grew up in a poor family on John Street in Nelson, Lancashire, and attended Edge End High School, both of which were later demolished.
[a] He left school aged sixteen with no qualifications,[4] and took a Youth Training Scheme course at a construction site for £27.50 per week (equivalent to £93 in 2023) plus overtime,[5]: 3:24 where he pebbledashed buildings.
After choosing to enter the UK automotive industry, he asked several garages if he could have a part-exchanged car to restore and sell in exchange for some of the profits.
[6] His first part-exchange was a heavily scratched Vauxhall Cavalier with flat tyres, which he bought for £70, advertised in the local paper for £100 and sold for £97.
[2] He repeated this process until he could afford to buy upfront,[6] and would stuff his wallet with paper to make himself appear richer to prospective sellers.
He met his future wife while working at a nightclub after she told him the music he was playing was rubbish, prompting him to invite her to pick a record so long as she wrote her phone number on its sleeve.
[12] In 2008, after the 2007–2008 financial crisis, Fishwick found that big banks had stopped lending his customers money, posing an existential threat to his business.
[13] He later opened Burnley Savings and Loans in September 2011 in Keirby Walk in the town centre using a peer-to-peer crowdfunding model, with "Bank on Dave" emblazoned on the front of the shop as an advertising slogan.
[16] Reviewing the second episode, Alex Hardy of The Times described the show as "some of the most joyous TV seen this year" and opined that Fishwick "could have been one of the best comedy characters of 2012".
[29] In 2013, Fishwick appeared on The Secret Millions, in which he and a group of teenagers[30] who had suffered challenging upbringings such as homelessness or addiction attempted to open a employment agency.
"[37] In 2020, Fishwick appeared on a week of episodes of Your Money And Your Life, a BBC One daytime consumer show presented by Matt Allwright and Kym Marsh.