Roger Cook obituary: The investigative journalist famed for exposing conmen, criminals and corruption
Roger Cook, who has died at 83, was an investigative journalist best known for his current affairs programme The Cook Report.
He joined ITV in 1985, and the eponymous series ran for 16 seasons and more than 120 episodes, as he pursued criminals, con-men and corrupt officials.
It was the most popular current affairs programme on television at the time, with an audience of up to 10 million.
Cook exposed child pornography, Northern Ireland protection rackets, baby trading in Brazil and the illicit ivory trade.
He also looked at illegal immigration, war criminals in Bosnia, those behind 9/11 and other terrorist plots and the Russian black market in weapons-grade plutonium.
A number of his programmes were followed by successful police prosecutions or major changes in the law.
A run-in with the former Yorkshire miners’ leader Arthur Scargill was less successful, however.
In 1990 The Cook Report alleged Scargill and other union officials had misused donations from Libya and the Soviet Union to pay off personal mortgages and to fund the International Miners’ Organisation.
Scargill denied the claims, insisting the money had been stored in secret accounts to shield it from seizure by the courts.
The union was later exonerated of wrongdoing by an independent inquiry and a public apology was made.
Cook was injured many times in the course of making his programme and exposing wrongdoing.
Born in New Zealand, he began his career in journalism in Australia, where he was raised.
He was the son of Alfred Cook, an art teacher, and Linda (née Kirk) who decided to make the move from their home country while the war in the Pacific was at its height.
Roger funded his education with part-time jobs as a runner on a Sydney newspaper and by reading news bulletins on a local radio station.
The experience was sufficiently intoxicating for him to abandon earlier ambitions of becoming a vet, and he moved into broadcasting permanently as a researcher, assistant, scriptwriter and eventually reporter with the Australian national broadcaster, ABC.
He also spent two years running the film department at an advertising agency.
He moved to the UK in 1968 to join BBC Radio 4’s The World At One programme as a reporter and presenter.
He later created and presented his Radio 4 show Checkpoint, which ran from 1973 to 1985 and was focused on exposing criminal wrongdoing and injustice.
It had a similar format to his ITV show which ran for 12 years and led to Cook winning a Bafta Television special award in 1998.
In 2007 he looked back on some of his most memorable stings in a 90-minute special titled Roger Cook’s Greatest Hits, during which he admitted he had received death threats due to the series.
Cook was known for his confrontational, doorstepping investigative style which was parodied by comics such as Reeves and Mortimer, as well as Sir Stephen Fry – who poked fun at him in the Channel 4 comedy series This Is David Lander.
Cook’s first marriage, to Madeline Koh in 1966, ended in divorce eight years later. In 1982 he married Frances Knox, with whom he had a daughter. Both survive him.