The Cook Report

[Deskbound Cunt]

Roger Cook then. I've been watching a bunch of them on YouTube. Absolutely love him.

Hot Dog! Remember that time when you could cash in your savings and start your own business? Some proper horrible scammers in this episode. 10/10 for Rog's disguise.

Triads in Manchester. Not for the feint hearted.

Perhaps the most notorious episode. If the subject matter wasn't so grim it'd be hilarious. It's basically the Brass Eye Paedogedon episode.

[Des Wigwam]

I mentioned the paedophile one in the Unintentionally Amusing Documentaries thread. It is truly astonishing. It's like they're investigating nothing more than some sales scam on Watchdog.

Been a while but the sex shop bit could be in TLoG and forcing the man to burn his collection is almost Partridge.

[Deskbound Cunt]

I mentioned the paedophile one in the Unintentionally Amusing Documentaries thread. It is truly astonishing. It's like they're investigating nothing more than some sales scam on Watchdog.

Been a while but the sex shop bit could be in TLoG and forcing the man to burn his collection is almost Partridge.

Yea, it's one of those "I really shouldn't laugh" moments.

The opening credits are marvellous. Dead exciting music, clips of him fighting whilst his cig burns in his ashtray.

[shoulders]

Worth mentioning the bit where Roger makes the paedophile burn the child pornography on a fireplace, while heavily chastising him like a juvenile delinquent, as though that is going to make him stop, or as though that is going to help the process of criminal justice. One of the truly extraordinary moments of The Fuck having a surprise holiday to Belize.

[non capisco]

Just the thumbnail of that hot dog wars one made me laugh out loud. Incredible disguise, Roger.

I think the paedo one very nearly shows you some incredibly dodgy shit doesn't it? Or am I thinking of the BBC's peerlessly depressing three parter 'The Hunt For Britain's Paedophiles'? Either way the guy he confronts and the way he says "In myyyyyy shop?" still bubbles up in my head quite a lot.

[kalowski]

"What? In my shop?"
One of the greatest moments in TV.

[Yussef Dent]

Roger Cook then. I've been watching a bunch of them on YouTube. Absolutely love him.

Hot Dog! Remember that time when you could cash in your savings and start your own business? Some proper horrible scammers in this episode. 10/10 for Rog's disguise.

Where I grew up we used to get Central News East and the hot dog wars were a pretty big thing when Gary Thompson was killed. It's sometimes laughed at a bit because of Cook's disguise, and the hot dog wreath at Thompson's funeral, but like you say there were some seriously dodgy and nasty bastards involved.

I'm glad that channel has been set up on YouTube (an archive of the TV shows was destroyed in a fire) but unfortunately some of the videos uploaded have come from rough and glitchy quality VHS' so you really have to tolerate that on some. They've done really well to get that many episodes though.

There's some classic moments in them and Cook seemed to be absolutely fearless. One's I've watched recently are the one where they expose pub protection rackets where if you're a new landlord of a pub a load of people would come in and start a fake fight and you'd have to pay heavies to stop it happening again or face the consequences. The cut-and-shut cars one is a good one, it focuses on cars that have been in accidents that have split in half, but at the end they make a young couple watch a crash test of a chop shop car they've just bought and it stays in one piece.

Not the Cook Report but him working on the BBC exposing an antiques dealer selling plastic replicas, who attacks Cook with a metal bar with some over theatrical shouting chucked in to boot, is bloody hilarious.

[Milo]

Worth mentioning the bit where Roger makes the paedophile burn the child pornography on a fireplace, while heavily chastising him like a juvenile delinquent, as though that is going to make him stop, or as though that is going to help the process of criminal justice. One of the truly extraordinary moments of The Fuck having a surprise holiday to Belize.

"let's end this episode by destroying all the physical evidence"

[monkfromhavana]

When I was 17 a friend and I got a very severe glare off Roger Cook outside of a pub in Middleton, Warwickshire. Roger was in a mood because my friend's brother who worked in said pub has just denied him a sandwich at is was literally about 1 minute past the cut-off time for ordering food.

We had also just picked up some weed (well, solid) that was sitting on our dashboard as we pulled in, so having Roger Cook suddenly appear from nowhere seemingly striding towards us definitely caused a fleeting moment of  severe "Fucking hell"'s from us.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

Where I grew up we used to get Central News East and the hot dog wars were a pretty big thing when Gary Thompson was killed. It's sometimes laughed at a bit because of Cook's disguise, and the hot dog wreath at Thompson's funeral, but like you say there were some seriously dodgy and nasty bastards involved.

Hi fellow East Midlander.  Thompson got shot in 1990, didn't he?  I recall in his picture in 1990, he looked like a cross between the diner who explodes in Meaning of Life and one of Harry Enfield's Scousers.  Hot Dog wars sounds as surreal as Ice-Cream Wars, which were a thing in Scotland in the early 1980s, where some people were jailed for murder over that trade.

[shoulders]

Yeah, iirc there's some fleeting screening of actual child porn screened on the Cook Report episode to show the viewers what child porn looks like, presumably because they thought it would be no different to showing their audience alien soup.

You'll reach the same point of thinking...shit, when is this going to cutaway?

I don't think they looked into who the victims were let alone sought their permission to screen their abuse nationally.

[Milo]

Was there a bit of a different attitude to it back then? That is, was it considered just seriously dodgy rather than what many people now would consider to be the worst crime? Would tally a bit with the Savile stuff where it was treated as a joke rather than something utterly abhorrent.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

Was there a bit of a different attitude to it back then? That is, was it considered just seriously dodgy rather than what many people now would consider to be the worst crime? Would tally a bit with the Savile stuff where it was treated as a joke rather than something utterly abhorrent.

Owning indecent photographs of children only became a crime in 1978.

[Deskbound Cunt]

Was there a bit of a different attitude to it back then? That is, was it considered just seriously dodgy rather than what many people now would consider to be the worst crime? Would tally a bit with the Savile stuff where it was treated as a joke rather than something utterly abhorrent.

There was. In the Cook Paedogedon episode they show classified adverts in the back of mainstream magazines (I'm guessing Paul Raymond type mags) where people were offering to swap kiddie porn.

[Milo]

Hell's teeth, that's insane. Bit worse than the odd blind eye turned to drink driving back in the day.

[Des Wigwam]

Just watched the Paedogedon one again. Thing is it's so much more measured than the things that Paedogedon was satirizing.

It is absolutely bananas by today's standards though. There's almost too much to process:

The opening and closing shots of a childs bed and toys with nursery music - fair enough that is pure Brass Eye and it feels like they did use that or a variation.
The police lacking enough intel to infiltrate the bulletin boards then Cook having a couple of numbers the guy can use plus a list of distributors from US Customs.
The smoky sax music they either dub or could have removed from the clips of child abuse films they show.
The soft core stills of the imagery they show.
The complete lack of protecting identities (as @shoulders mentions)

One phrase I am going to be using from now on though is: "America! The world's largest market for child pornography".

Am onto the 93 follow up one now. Just watching a lady (of course she's from the West Mids, I groaned) talking about  finding her son and his friends watching "hard pornography" while he sits in the foreground playing Ridge Racer.

Brilliant now they have a sting operation bulleting board called Blue Lagoon operated by Dave Parry - the first man in the UK convicted of handling computer pornography - sitting and working alongside the Manchester policeman who caught him. Bet that's a very tense working environment. It's a tiny office too.

[Mr Banlon]

Mike Brewer from Wheeler Dealers is slowly turning into Roger Cook

[El Unicornio, mang]

Definitely seemed more brazen about it in the past.

There's a bit in the Hunt for Britain's Paedophile's where a victim is talking about how the film she was forced to take part in by her Dad in the 1980s (which they show clips of) when she a very young child won the award for best film at some French awards thing that year.

Also, this

Spoiler alert

[close]

[Des Wigwam]

Was there a bit of a different attitude to it back then? That is, was it considered just seriously dodgy rather than what many people now would consider to be the worst crime? Would tally a bit with the Savile stuff where it was treated as a joke rather than something utterly abhorrent.

I think it's quite clear watching these two eps and listening to the various experts that the effect that the production and distribution of this material - on the "participants" and the consumers - isn't understood.

[Mr Banlon]

At least Joe Persico from the Hot Dog Wars episode cleaned up his act :
https://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/news/derby-news/bullying-customer-threatened-kill-derbyshire-4024981
https://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/burton/hilton-man-faces-jail-1594222
Nice family all round : https://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/news/derby-news/payback-derby-family-business-owes-6397885

[Phoenix Lazarus]

This one about stalking is a bit desolate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVJ90eiTzvQ

It was shown in 1994, and makes the point that, at the time, only America had laws against stalking.  When Cook asks a woman at the 18-minute-50-second mark "will your fear ever abate?" you can see what he wants her answer to be.  Despite the content, I couldn't but be mildly amused when, at the 22-minute mark, he confronts a farmer about harassing a woman nearby, and says accusingly "you have convictions for making obscene phone calls to her; you threatened her daughter's life; you keep on making silent phone-calls", then ends with "you even resorted to stealing her doves".

[Yussef Dent]

Hi fellow East Midlander.  Thompson got shot in 1990, didn't he?  I recall in his picture in 1990, he looked like a cross between the diner who explodes in Meaning of Life and one of Harry Enfield's Scousers.  Hot Dog wars sounds as surreal as Ice-Cream Wars, which were a thing in Scotland in the early 1980s, where some people were jailed for murder over that trade.

Checking up on it... he did, which would have meant I was 6 when it happened, I definitely remember it though. The subsequent attempts to get justice for the man done for his murder would crop up for years after however, there was always something that never sat right about it.

[Des Wigwam]

The 93 Paedagedon one has a great little scene where they go on a raid and all try to get into a tiny lift.

The rigged pop charts one seems like a prank that's getting out of hand with the poor researcher doing more and more gigs and climbing the charts. I like to imagine it gets to a point where she's someone like Celine Dion and is saying "we must have enough footage now. Do I have to do another 180 day worldwide tour?"

It also highlights how shit American things look in Britain. There are lots of shots of a limousine cruising through the streets of London and it looks depressed to be there.

[Jockice]

The rigged pop charts one seems like a prank that's getting out of hand with the poor researcher doing more and more gigs and climbing the charts. I like to imagine it gets to a point where she's someone like Celine Dion and is saying "we must have enough footage now. Do I have to do another 180 day worldwide tour?"

It also highlights how shit American things look in Britain. There are lots of shots of a limousine cruising through the streets of London and it looks depressed to be there.

Was that the one with Edwina Currie's daughter? And a single that got nowhere near the charts?

[Des Wigwam]

Was that the one with Edwina Currie's daughter? And a single that got nowhere near the charts?

Jesus. You might be right. Tbh it started playing part 2 automatically and I only had half an eye on it but she does look a lot like her. Be having a word with my libido later.

Very likely the single didn't support the hypothesis of the programme. There's lots of quite depressing nightclub gigs and carefully edited autograph signings, and men on hidden cams saying things like: "I can put this down as 2000 units". Noel Gallagher is a vox pop in it though standing outside his tackily customised Notting Hill front door.

[SteveDave]

Here you go complete with a tantalizing thumbnail

[Billy]

(an archive of the TV shows was destroyed in a fire)

This does occasionally get claimed, but I've read convincing reports that it's actually bollocks and all the shows exist in the main ITV archive. Probably someone trying to spread a lost media conspiracy regarding Insert Episode Here.


Oddly enough I remember this show quite well, mostly because in January 1995 I remember hearing on the news that some other bloke with the name Cook had died and six year old me confused him with the man from the report show, getting rather baffled when it returned for a new series and he's alive and well.

[Indomitable Spirit]

Was that the one with Edwina Currie's daughter? And a single that got nowhere near the charts?

Yep



I do remember the minor media storm at the time and also the internal wrangling I experienced coming to terms with how much I fancied a woman who looked exactly the same as Edwina Currie

[Des Wigwam]

Am now having to deal with aged almost 50.

And that shot even features the out-of-place limo.

[Indomitable Spirit]

The thumbnail for this one is truly special