Author Description

In 25 years of investigative reporting, Roger Cook has been knocked unconscious a dozen times, hospitalized on almost thirty occasions, and has had 23 bones broken by those who have resented his ruthless persistence - or just objected to the fact that he exists at all. He was born 6 April 1943 in New Zealand. His father - a timid man afraid of attack from Japanese submarines rumoured to have been sighted in Auckland harbour - soon found refuge and a new start for his family in Sydney, Australia. If anything was going to prepare Roger Cook for what he was to become, it was growing up in the Australia of the 1950s - a melting-pot of different nationalities, scarred by the war, and with an unsophisticated and sometimes brutal education system. After school and college he found his broadcasting feet at a Sydney commercial radion station, moving on to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He then emigrated to Britain to tackle BBC radio, where he prospered at "The World at One". his brainchild however was "Checkpoint", which became the most popular programme on Radio 4 after "Today". Cook and his team exposed a breadth of institutional incompetencies, bad law, injustices and naked criminalty. This is his life story.