 Indefatigable scourge of fraudsters, pornographers, charlatans, con-men and
unsavoury characters of all kinds, Roger Cook was a fixture of British TV
screens during the 1980s and 90s, when he routinely risked bruises, broken limbs or
worse as the most visible of investigative journalists.
Born 6 April 1943 in New Zealand, he was raised in Australia, and worked as a
reporter on radio and television for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
before coming to the UK in 1968. He soon found employment as a reporter on BBC
Radio 4's World at One, joining a growing number of antipodeans in British
broadcasting that included John Pilger, Barry Humphries, Germaine Greer, Rolf
Harris and Robert Hughes. Having graduated to presenting The World at One and
PM, he conceived the investigative radio series Checkpoint, which he produced,
edited and presented from 1973 to 1985, and on which he established the fearless
doorstepping approach that would be his hallmark.
From the mid-1970s he developed that approach on television with his
investigative reports for BBC1's Nationwide (1969-84) and Newsnight (1980-) and
in a brief TV version of Checkpoint (BBC, 1984), before he was lured to Central
Television, initially for the Midlands-only Central Weekend, then for his own
networked series. It was The Cook Report (ITV, 1987-98) that sealed his 'taped
crusader' reputation. Over half-an-hour, the programmes would build up a careful
and detailed picture of miscellaneous nefarious activities in the classic
investigative style, but the unvarying climax would be the point when,
microphone in hand, Cook would descend on the unwary and camera-shy villain,
whose responses ranged from the evasive to the violent.
Cook's fearlessness and endurance in the face of such provocations were
beyond question; he successfully exposed and, in many cases, helped to bring to
justice countless public menaces, from relatively low-level fraudsters to child
pornographers, arms dealers, drug traffickers and even international war
criminals (he beat other journalists to the first British on-screen interview
with the notorious Serbian ethnic cleanser Arkan).
All the same, it was always hard to avoid the conclusion that much of his
audience - however much they aligned themselves with Cook's moral campaigns -
kept watching at least partly in the hope of witnessing a particularly violent
confrontation. Newspaper and magazine interviews and profiles would invariably
itemise his worst injuries incurred in the course of duty, including
concussions, a broken back, cracked ribs, broken fingers and assorted assaults
with umbrellas, lit cigars and all manner of vehicles.
He has had his critics: his frequent use of 'doorstopping' - turning up
unannounced at subjects' homes or workplaces with camera crew in tow - brought
accusations that he was, at least sometimes, stage-managing confrontations
rather than seeking genuine revelations, and the practice has since been much
more heavily circumscribed in broadcasters' codes (to the frustration of many
investigative journalists). Others felt Cook's brand of populist journalism a
dilution of the more exacting current affairs form pioneered by ITV in This
Week/TV Eye (1956-92) and World in Action (1956-89).
The Cook Report's 1990 investigation into alleged misappropriation of funds
by miners' union leader Arthur Scargill ('Where Did the Money Go?', tx.
5/3/1990) was itself investigated by Channel 4's Dispatches (1987-) in an
edition directed by Ken Loach ('The Arthur Legend', tx. 22/5/1991), in which
reporter Lorraine Heggessey doorstepped Cook himself and charged him with
"fabricating evidence" in another edition of his programme.
His propensity to non-accidental injury made him a particularly attractive
figure of fun for comedians during his heyday, which he has taken in good
humour; Stephen Fry's titular character in the mock-investigation comedy This is
David Lander (Channel 4, 1988) had Cook in mind.
Mark Duguid
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FILM & TV CREDITS
