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Roger Cook, the trailblazing investigative journalist best known for fronting U.K. network ITV’s current affairs show “The Cook Report” in the 1980s and 90s, has died. He was 83.
Cook’s family confirmed the news in a statement.
“Alongside a distinguished and award winning career in journalism, Roger was first and foremost a beloved husband and father,” it read.
ITV led the tributes, saying that Cook “worked tirelessly to expose criminal wrongdoing and injustice, helping to drive important and lasting changes in the law” and that “his fearless contribution to journalism will long be remembered.”
Born in New Zealand, Cook moved to the U.K. in the 1960s after starting his career as a broadcast journalist in Australia. Following a lengthy stint on BBC Radio 4’s “The World at One,” in the early 1970s he created and presented the radio show “Checkpoint,” which saw him look to expose criminals, con-men and official incompetence.
“The Cook Report,” launched in 1985, would be an higher-budget on-screen version of his radio program. It soon became known for its filmed stings and Cook’s numerous confrontations with those he was targeting — some of whom would respond with verbal and occasionally physical abuse. Cook — who was credited with inventing the doorstep interview technique — was injured on a number of occasions (he famously suffered three broken ribs during a confrontation in an earlier TV show), and at one point the police said a hitman had been hired to kill him. “The bravest/most beaten-up journalist in Britain,” is how Cook was described at the time.
At its peak, “The Cook Report” was the highest rated current affairs program on U.K. TV, with more than 12 million people tuning in. It ran for 16 seasons until 1999, returning for a 2007 special entitled “Roger Cook’s Greatest Hits” in which Cook revisited some of his most famous stories.
In 1997, the British Academy honored Cook with a special BAFTA award for “25 years of outstanding quality investigative reporting.”
