Roger Cook, the pioneering investigative journalist best known as the frontman for British network ITV’s current affairs show The Cook Report in the 1980s and 1990s, has died. He was 83 years old.
Mr Cook’s family confirmed the news in a statement.
“In addition to an award-winning and distinguished career in journalism, Roger was above all a loving husband and father,” it read.
ITV led the tribute, saying Mr Cook “worked tirelessly to expose criminal wrongdoing and wrongdoing and helped drive important and lasting legal change” and said: “His fearless contribution to journalism will be long remembered.”
Mr Cook was born in New Zealand and began his career as a broadcast journalist in Australia before moving to the UK in the 1960s. After a long stint on BBC Radio 4’s The World at One, in the early 1970s he created and hosted Checkpoint, a radio program exposing criminals, fraudsters and government incompetence.
The Cook Report, launched in 1985, is a high-budget screen version of his radio show. The location soon became known for filmed stabbings and numerous confrontations with people targeted by Mr. Cook. Some responded with verbal and sometimes physical abuse. Mr. Cook, credited with inventing the doorway interview technique, has been injured numerous times (famously breaking three ribs in a confrontation on a previous TV show), and at one point police announced that a hit man had been hired to kill him. Mr Cook was described at the time as “Britain’s bravest/most devastated journalist”.
At its peak, The Cook Report was the most-watched current affairs program on British television, watched by more than 12 million people. The show ran for 16 seasons until 1999, and in 2007 Cooke revisited some of his most famous stories in a special called “Roger Cook’s Greatest Hits.”
In 1997, the British Academy awarded Mr. Cook a Special BAFTA Award for “25 years of outstanding quality investigative reporting.”
