Does anyone remember the TV programme 'The Cook Report'?

[Lencoboy]

Just asking this as yesterday evening I stumbled across this old episode of the programme from April 1991 titled 'Hot Dog Wars' on YouTube.

In that particular episode, Roger Cook exposed 'illegal' hot dog/fast food vendors who were not only involved in organised criminal gangs but were also sabotaging and attacking fully 'legit' hot dog/fast food vendors, including the mention of one particular high-profile incident in Leicester the previous year (1990) that involved a murder. All very heavy (and indeed cringeworthy) stuff that I was totally unaware of at the time (nearly 14 years old) but would totally creep me out if there were regular reports of such things happening today, let alone all the usual knife crime stuff.

That Roger Cook was surely a brave man and must have really had a thick skin in order to successfully confront and help to bring to justice a lot of the psycho sh1tebags of the UK's criminal underworld. A true genius and a hero!

[BlueIris]

I once had to deal with a museum enquiry from Roger Cook. He was exceptionally rude to me when I was trying my best to help him out.

[Lencoboy]

I once had to deal with a museum enquiry from Roger Cook. He was exceptionally rude to me when I was trying my best to help him out.

Sounds like you had a spot of bad luck there BI.

Mind you, he could come across as rather forceful, plod-like and intimidating on occasions, and rumour has it that he eventually bottled out of doing the series due to being on the receiving end of a number of death threats later on, so inevitably the programme was rendered untenable by the end of the 90s. In fact, he even got duffed up on the odd occasions by some of the villains he had his run-ins with.

But it was edgy, groundbreaking, hard-hitting stuff during its 12 years on air, albeit cringeworthy on occasions.

I bet nobody in TV land would really have anywhere near the same amount of guts to do such programmes like 'The Cook Report', 'World In Action', and various others of that particular ilk today.

[Panicattacka]

The guy was a self-righteous, grandstanding blowhard. Typical super ego TV 'journalist'. I wish he'd gone away sooner.

[Catkins]

Weirdly we were talking about him the other day.

[NoraB]

"A cross between Meatloaf and the Equalizer".

[BlueIris]

Sounds about right, Nora. I was quite excited to work with him at first. Then I told him we had limited information, he requested a paid search anyway and then got very narky indeed because the information I gave him was, indeed, limited.

[BlueIris]

Sounds like you had a spot of bad luck there BI.

Mind you, he could come across as rather forceful, plod-like and intimidating on occasions, and rumour has it that he eventually bottled out of doing the series due to being on the receiving end of a number of death threats later on, so inevitably the programme was rendered untenable by the end of the 90s. In fact, he even got duffed up on the odd occasions by some of the villains he had his run-ins with.

But it was edgy, groundbreaking, hard-hitting stuff during its 12 years on air, albeit cringeworthy on occasions.

I bet nobody in TV land would really have anywhere near the same amount of guts to do such programmes like 'The Cook Report', 'World In Action', and various others of that particular ilk today.

No, not bad luck, he was definitely a tw@. He was a rich, powerful man crapping on a minimum wage employee who was doing her best. That's definitely ****tery.

[Carnation]

I remember this lencoboy. Quite shocking but revealing a lot of crooks and fakes. As you say, quite alarming to watch at times.

[Lencoboy]

On a similar note, I also remember Central Weekend Live on ITV on Friday evenings in the late 80s and through the 90s, where certain audience members and even some guests sometimes used to whip each other up into a frenzy and end up behaving like animals, which could also be dead cringeworthy and indeed embarrassing on such occasions.

I bet many audience participants who ended up causing epic rucks on some episodes of CW Live no doubt revelled in their 'fifteen minutes of fame' on live TV.

CW Live and the aforementioned 'Cook Report' were two of the finest examples of 'confrontation porn', especially during the late pre-Internet era.