Dangerous Ground

In 25 years of investigative reporting, Roger Cook has been knocked unconscious a dozen times, hospitalized on almost 30 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".
During its 12-year run, Cook and his team exposed a breadth of institutional incompetencies, bad law, injustices and naked criminality. The result was a series of awards for good journalism, significant changes in legislation, and the arrest and conviction of countless fraudsters and strong-arm villains. For his pains Cook earned the sobriquet of "The Most Beaten-up Journalist in Britain". Eventually he transferred the idea to television, where for twelve years "The Cook Report" flourished. Organized crime, drug-smuggling, pornography, animal cruelty, the IRA. Cook has attacked them all in search of justice - and won. This book is his story.