Exposing con artists, fraudsters, paedophiles and other villains on the BBC Radio 4 programme Checkpoint, then on ITV in The Cook Report, brought fame to Roger Cook – for both his foot-in-the-door journalism and the beatings he took from his targets. He received death threats, was roughed up, attacked with baseball bats, held at gunpoint, and suffered broken fingers, cracked ribs and dislocated shoulders.
While tackling one man who had been swindling pensioners out of money by lying that their properties were to be compulsorily purchased, Cook was run over by a car. As he came round after surgery, an Australian doctor told him: “Jeez, mate. Put it this way, if you weren’t built like a brick privy, you’d probably be dead.”
