ROGER COOK DOORSTEPPED BY FORMER VICTIM IN MILLION TO ONE CHANCE MEETING.

The Cookie Curse Strikes Again on the day of the Autumn Equinox. Cook get's his comeuppance as karma will out.

The photograph alongside was taken seconds before unsuspecting Roger Cook, (seen here chomping on a fat chocolate cake at the Hagan Daas coffee bar in Malaga Airport), was doorstepped by Mr Chris Bray, the completely innocent Leeds Bookshop Owner whom, readers may remember, Cook erroneously accused of being the godfather of British Satanism and of selling dead bodies.  

But  Corpulent Cook was dead wrong (forgive the pun) and the Satanic Ritual Abuse scare which spread like wildfire in this country was largely the result of Cook's Team choosing to run with the lies put out by fundamentalist fanatics.    The Cook Report were given a chance to apologise to Chris Bray after the programme but wouldn't play fair. Eventually the government's Broadcasting Complaints Commission were called in and after a face to face confrontation between Chris Bray and Roger Cook in London they adjuged that Cook and his Team had been grossly unfair to Mr Bray, that there was no evidence of  him selling dead bodies or organising Satanism and that he had nothing whatsoever to do with ritual abuse of any kind!  This was a landmark victory. Out of 800 suspect programmes Cook had never before been censured in this way.

Central TV who financed the Cook Report were forced by the BCC to publish a retraction in the TV press and carry a statement on air, vindicating Chris Bray.    Today the massive hysteria which Cook's programme generated has been largely forgotten along with the fact that every single case Cook quoted as evidence in that programme failed in the course of time. Millions of viewers saw that farrago of a programme but few know that a week after it was broadcast, Chris Bray's book shop was firebombed and largely destroyed in a hate crime which Mr Bray is absolutely convinced was a result of screening the programme.    

To his credit Mr Bray immediately rebuilt his bookshop  (www.sorcerers-apprentice.co.uk) and has continued working for freedom of belief and against persecution of minority beliefs ever since. He is a founder member of the SAFF and much of his work over the years has achieved a great deal in protecting freedom of belief for minorities.   Within months of Cook's scare programme  the big three cases fell apart, the Rochdale and Orkney Mass Child Lifts were travesties of justice and the British people demanded that Social Workers stopped chasing phantoms.  In 1994 the definitive Government report was published which categorically laid the blame for the scare at the feet of fundamentalist agitators, some of whom Cook's Team had liaised with. 

Ever since that day in July 1989 when the Cook Report mis-truths were broadcast, Mr Bray has done his best to promote the truth behind Media Spin, much of which you will find elsewhere on this website, and in so doing has protected countless numbers of innocent people who would have been caught up in this hysteria.   Even now after all their manifest failures the coterie of Satan Hunters in social work still hark back to the Cook Report as though it had some significance, so Mr Bray and the SAFF have continually campaigned to bring Cook to book.  

When Mr Bray refused to talk to Cook his team doctored a five year old interview Mr Bray had given in good faith for an entirely unrelated purpose. They cut up this very positive interview which actually showed Mr Bray in good light, and re-assembled it to make it appear that Mr Bray was irresponsible and actually admitting to  not caring whether anyone was harmed by the criminals Cook was chasing.  This was played on air to 13 million viewers as 'proof' of Cook's accusations about him, yet in the original audiotrack  a copy of which we hold as proof,  Mr Bray actually said the reverse!  He did care, would not countenance anything illegal, would not harm anyone and did not want anyone to be harmed.   How could any TV team ever do such a terribly dishonest thing as to try to incriminate an innocent person using duplicity of this kind and then try to pass it off as 'investigative journalism'?      Mr Bray's public announcements exposing the Cook Report's activities have continued over the years.  The Cook Report is perhaps the worst example of the excesses of the British Media.  It is clear that Mr Bray will not stop until Cookie himself apologises and admits he was wrong.  Equally Cookie will not admit that the Cook Report perpetrated the biggest lie on British Television and so the confrontation has continued and will continue until the Truth will out.     Many of Cook's targets were criminals and deserved what they got.  How unjust is it therefore that Cook would continue to allow a completely innocent man to suffer after Trial by TV  in the Cook Report? And how satisfying is it that Mr Bray , the lone crusader after justice, was able to turn the tables on Cook in Malaga and force him to face his Nemesis .

In the light of this background we set the scene in Malaga airport when Roger Cook, now bearded , largely forgotten by the cameras and most of his audience, much older and very overweight, is returning from a trip to the Costa Del Sol.  Not on any ordinary day, but on the day of the Autumn Equinox when Pablo Picasso Airport at Malaga is heaving with thousands of British holidaymakers scurrying in and out on their way home or to their hotels.   Out of this seething mass of humanity, thousands of miles away from England, two figures booked in at different check-in desks at  almost precisely the same time and made for adjacent tables at the same coffee bar.   A minute or two either way and the spell would have been broken.   Chris Bray sat down for a quiet coffee and a minute later the Corpulent unsuspecting Cookie waddled up and chose to sit down at the next table.   Cookie must have felt completely safe and relaxed.  If this had been an assassination attempt the Taped Crusader would have been stone dead in seconds but Mr Bray knew this was just karma working itself out.  The lesson Cook was being forced to learn was that the gods can arrange for anything to happen, no matter how protected and safe a person may feel, no matter how much money one has spent on hi-tech security. One in the wrong must pay and continue to pay, for the unfairnesses he has perpetrated on others.  Cookie will have to apologise to Mr Bray sooner or later and this was a good opportunity for him to do so.  

Many men might have lost their cool when faced with someone who had evidently participated in a campaign to discredit him on National TV with the most dastardly of  untrue allegations but Mr Bray is not like that.   Cookies' close aid Tim Tate , co-producer of The Devil's Work actually admitted he knew of the ongoing fundamentalist campaign  to discredit Mr Bray in a radio interview the day after Cook's appalling programme was broadcast but despite this ongoing sectarian victimisation they still went ahead with their reprehensible programme based mostly on hearsay from fundamentalist agitators!    

Instead of  being seized with rage Mr Bray says that the cult film The Hill, starring Sean Connery came fleetingly to mind as he watched the portly Cook bolt down large mouthfuls of chocolate cake.   [A word of explanation for those of us who are not film buffs.  In The Hill, a private (Connery) , is bullied by a sadistic RSM (played superbly by Harry Andrews) who punishes him and other squaddies unmercifully, making them repetitively scale a man-made mound  (The Hill) in full kit , in full sun, almost unto death, for any slight misdemeanour of Kings Regs.   It is purely sadistic vindictiveness and the RSM gets away with it by stretching the rules but when he makes a mistake he gives Connery  the chance to bring charges against him , causing an enquiry which could remove the RSM from duty and saving himself and his fellow soldiers from future tortures.  To avoid this the cunning RSM provokes a personal fight with Connery challenging him to sort it out privately in an open cell in the glasshouse. Connery realises that if he fights he loses all chance of bringing the complaint and removing the RSM ... yet he cannot resist taking revenge for the many injustices perpetrated against him and so  punches the living daylights out of the Sergeant.  A chance for light to be shed on the Truth is lost and the old order which condones bullying in the army continues.]

But Mr Bray is not after Revenge, he is after JUSTICE.  Cook knows this well, because,  'Justice Not Vengeance' is the title of the Simon Weisenthal biography which Mr Bray was reading on the journey down to the BSC hearing. The one which fell out of Mr Bray's briefcase in front of  Cook before the hearing started.  Cook looked at the book and at Mr Bray, but may have not understood the synchronicity.  

In Chris Bray's own words this is what happened at the airport.

'I  don't get much time off but had been invited to spend a few days in a  place called Rhondda in Southern Spain for the Equinox.  I was attracted to the location because Hemingway loved the place and I had never been.  I met up with people I had previously only corresponded with and everything went well.  

On the way back  through Malaga airport who should I bump into but Roger Cook. He came right into my lap! On his way back home, Cook actually chose to sit at the next table to me at the Coffee bar  in the departure lounge!  I let him get settled with a fat cake and coffee and then handed him a napkin and a pen and asked him for his autograph.  The old has-been seemed pleased to have been recognised.  

As I stood over him he smiled and said,

'of course, what's your name'.  

I said Chris Bray....

and he wrote 'Chris..., and then hesitated.

I said

'you know; from the Sorcerers' Apprentice Bookshop'.  

Cook looked like like the proverbial 'man without trousers in a public place'.  His aggressive confidence seemed to have disappeared along with his minders .   I recalled his comment whilst doorstepping me in 1989; 'pathetic' he had said, mainly because he was lost for words at the time.  Now the tables were turned and the word fitted him perfectly.    

He recovered his composure by forcing a smile and saying

' Of course I remember',

and signed the napkin with such a forced flourish he forgot to finish off  my name. When I read it he had written  ' To Chris, Keep Safe, Roger Cook'.  I remember thinking that was somewhat of a strange sentiment.

Then he said

'What are you going to do with this?'

I said I would probably frame it for old times' sake.   A cynical smirk crept across Cook's face.

Then I said that I had changed my mind , that the napkin was going on the SAFF website along with the photograph that I had surreptitiously taken minutes previously.

If  looks could kill I would already be dead. He virtually threw my pen at me and I snatched the napkin as the situation became clear. Here he was, completely unprotected, virtually on the Equinox, being doorstepped in a most public place in a million to one chance by his most strident adversary.   Something that no-one could have ever envisaged.

The old duffer is fatter and more flustered than ever, his old back injury is now so severe he doesn't walk but sort of waddles. He has grown a beard, Colonel Sanders style, presumably to avoid old enemies.  No one else seemed to notice him but I spotted him immediately of course. ' 

The problem for Cook is this.  Mr Bray had no intention of causing trouble.  Cook should be grateful that Mr Bray is a decent and honourable man and not the criminal that Cook painted him in the minds of so many millions of viewers, however the gods can arrange anything and there must be lots of real criminals out there who want to get revenge on Cookie, right or wrong.   After such a million to one chance meeting, it must have become crystal clear to Cookie that the precautions he has taken to avoid the repercussions of his past doings are worthless when the Gods can arrange for anything to happen at any time .  As the Bray-Cook doorstepping shows, that time is usually when one is  least expecting it.

Rumour has it that Cookie is trying to get another TV series going.    We watch with bated breath.

Keep tuned for more revelations of the Cookie Curse.

 Ends:

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