ROGER COOK (1943 - 2026): AN OBITUARY

Roger Cook, the Antipodean inquisitor who turned the doorstep into a theatre of ritual humiliation, has filed his final report at the age of 83, peacefully, which must have come as something of a surprise to a man who spent half his working life being punched, kicked, bitten by dogs and occasionally hospitalised by people who preferred their secrets unminced. 

Born in Auckland in 1943 and raised in Australia, Cook arrived in Britain in the late Sixties with the air of a man who had already decided that the world was full of villains and that it was his job to introduce them to the concept of accountability, usually at close range with a microphone. He invented the doorstep interview the way other people invent excuses: it just seemed the natural thing to do. Where lesser reporters sent letters or waited for press releases, Cook preferred the ambush, preferably with cameras rolling and a film crew trying not to trip over their own ethical qualms. 

The Cook Report, which ran for sixteen series and attracted audiences of up to twelve million, was less current affairs than medieval morality play with better lighting. Villains, con-men, protection racketeers, baby-traders and the occasional Balkan war criminal were lured into the open, only to discover that the small, determined New Zealander in the leisure shirt was not there to exchange pleasantries. Cook took his bruises like medals. Broken ribs, dog attacks, the occasional threat to his life—he collected them the way other men collect wine. One almost expected him to produce a vintage fracture and offer tasting notes. 

His genius lay in making the pursuit of justice look like an extreme sport. Other journalists might expose corruption; Cook preferred to ring the doorbell and ask the corrupt gentleman why he was such a swine, ideally while the gentleman’s neighbours were watching. It was tabloid in method, Reithian in intent, and endlessly watchable. He won a BAFTA special award for a quarter-century of outstanding investigative reporting, an honour that probably felt inadequate to a man who had once been hospitalised nearly thirty times in the name of public service broadcasting. 

In private he was, by all accounts, rather more civilised than the average episode of his programme suggested. He leaves a wife, Frances, a daughter, and the quiet satisfaction of knowing that a generation of journalists grew up thinking that real reporting involved getting shouted at in several languages while trying not to drop the recording equipment.

ROY HATTERSLEY (1932 - 2026): AN OBITUARY

Roy Hattersley, that indomitable pillar of the Labour Party who spent decades polishing his credentials as the thinking man’s Yorkshireman, finally shuffled off this mortal coil at the age of 93, proving that even the most durable political lard can eventually melt. Born in Sheffield in 1932 into the sort of solid Labour household that regarded socialism as both birthright and hobby, young Roy ascended the greasy pole with the unhurried certainty of a man who had already composed his own footnotes. 

As MP for Birmingham Sparkbrook for more than three decades, Shadow Cabinet stalwart, and Deputy Leader under Neil Kinnock from 1983 to 1992, Hattersley embodied the respectable face of the soft left—or was it the hard centre? Even he seemed occasionally unsure. He railed against Militant with the righteous fury of a man who knew a good purge when he saw one, yet retained enough old-fashioned eloquence to make one wonder whether he secretly preferred the sound of his own voice to the prospect of electoral victory. In the great struggle to make Labour electable, he played the reliable second fiddle, sawing away gamely while the orchestra tuned up for Tony Blair’s more ambitious concerto. 

Television, that merciless leveller, granted him two immortal cameos. On Spitting Image, his puppet became a glorious fountain of expectoration, lisping and spraying with every sibilant in a performance so vivid that Hattersley himself graciously conceded it put the 'spit' into the programme. One almost felt the latex version had more expressive range. Then came the sublime Have I Got News for You moment in 1993 when, having cancelled for the third time, he was replaced by a tub of lard credited as The Rt Hon. Tubson of Lardon MP. It was, the producers noted with forensic deadpan, “liable to give much the same performance and imbued with many of the same qualities.” The lard, along with Paul Merton, won. Politics rarely produces so perfect an epitaph. 

Away from the Commons he churned out more than twenty books—biographies, histories, memoirs—like a one-man municipal library with opinions. A journalist, broadcaster, and Sheffield Wednesday loyalist to the end, he combined pomposity and self-deprecation in proportions that kept him just the right side of insufferable. In an age of slick soundbites, Hattersley remained defiantly prolix, a reminder that politics once rewarded men who could talk at length without quite saying very much. He is survived by his second wife and a legacy that, like the famous tub, sits there solidly: substantial, slightly ridiculous, and oddly impossible to ignore.

DAVID HOCKNEY (1937 - 2026): AN OBITUARY

David Hockney, who has finally downed his brushes at the age of 88, spent a long lifetime proving that provincial origins were no barrier to swimming in the shallow end of international glamour. Born in Bradford in 1937, he emerged from the woolly north like a splash of primary colour in a sepia photograph, destined to make the art world look at itself in the mirror and wonder why it had bothered getting dressed. 

Hockney’s early work announced him as one of the brighter sparks of British Pop Art, though he was always too interested in actual draughtsmanship to be mistaken for a mere ironist. While others were busy silkscreening soup cans, he painted boys, swimming pools, and the occasional double portrait that suggested domesticity might be tolerable if the lighting was right. A Bigger Splash (1967) captured the essence of Californian hedonism: all surface, no regret, the perfect metaphor for a man who understood that life, like acrylic paint, looks better when it dries quickly. He decamped to Los Angeles in the Sixties and stayed long enough to make the place seem almost cultured, commuting between palm trees and the damp moors of Yorkshire with the cheerful inconsistency of a man who refused to be pinned down by geography or critical theory. 

His portraits were mercilessly accurate without ever quite becoming cruel, a rare achievement in an age when most figurative painters were either sentimental or sneering. He drew his mother with the tender exasperation of a son who knows exactly how many times she has asked about the central heating. Later, he embraced technology with the wide-eyed enthusiasm of a retiree discovering emojis, producing iPad drawings that somehow made the tablet look like a serious artistic tool rather than an expensive distraction. The art market, never slow to recognise a living legend with a decent PR sense, rewarded him handsomely: Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) fetched $90 million in 2018, proving that even in late capitalism, a well-placed diving board retains its value. 

Hockney chain-smoked, wore loud jackets, and maintained the air of a mildly amused provincial who had somehow conquered the world without ever quite believing it mattered. He designed opera sets, argued about perspective with the ghosts of the Renaissance, and painted vast Yorkshire landscapes that made the English countryside look almost as vivid as his Californian fantasies. Through it all he retained the air of a man who had gate-crashed the party of modernism and decided to rearrange the furniture.

In an era of conceptual fog and performative despair, Hockney simply kept looking and kept painting. The results were frequently beautiful, occasionally repetitive, and never boring. He leaves behind a body of work that suggests pleasure is not the enemy of seriousness, and that even the most sophisticated eye might occasionally enjoy a decent view. The art world, which he both charmed and quietly mocked, will miss him more than it cares to admit.