[fetchmail]How not to run fetchmail as root?

Hi, I'm a newbie to linux and I've finally got fetchmail & qmail to work. 
However I would like fetchmail to run as non-root. I've read the FAQ and it 
says to copy the .fetchmailrc into /etc

That did not work as fecthmail needed me to own the .fetchmailrc 

I would like to run a script that would use fecthmail to check for mail and 
then use serialmail to send mail to my isp.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

JACK