Toby’s story about the disgraced journalist Peter Wilby took me back to when I was a teenager in the 1970s.
It’s over 50 years since an incident that remains so vivid in my memory I can recall it in uncomfortable detail. As it happens, I’m a little sceptical about the reliability of memory, but in this instance some of the detail is verifiable and I’m confident that this is what happened.
In the summer of 1972 I was 14 and had a friend at school in Wimbledon. His father was the broadcaster Derek Cooper (1925-2014), whom some people will recall recorded the voiceovers for Tomorrow’s World. He went on to work for Radio 4, devising and presenting The Food Programme. He was a garrulous and domineering figure, not tall but heavily built and with a large moustache as well as a huge ego. He was one of those people who completely dominated others in his vicinity and was clearly accustomed to this.
Cooper invited me to accompany him and his son to Television Centre to watch him recording an item for Tomorrow’s World. Just him. No-one else (such as James Burke about whom I wrote the other day, or Raymond Baxter whom Cooper told us was a “complete c***”). Nothing untoward happened. Indeed, I enjoyed the day.
Cooper had a holiday house near Portree in the Isle of Skye to which he took his wife and dragged his teenage children for the summer holidays. Knowing how resistant his son was to this annual Jacobite Hebridean exile, he invited me to accompany them for a month in August 1972. My parents were doubtless keen to get rid of me for a month too. They were Catholics. Cooper was brought up as a Catholic. I do not know whether that helped them trust him though I don’t recall that he had any faith.
And so it was arranged that I would accompany Cooper on the Inverness sleeper from London, he having been down for work reasons and was then heading back to rejoin his family. We were to share a compartment. Is that ringing alarm bells? At the time, I had not the slightest concern – and nor, obviously, did my parents.
Cooper took me to dinner in the dining car. He had a reputation as a gourmet so it was all rather important to him to show off where the food was concerned. After we had eaten, we returned to the compartment where he had me sit on the bed beside him. He ordered what seemed to me to be astronomical quantities of miniature bottles of whisky. He became drunker and drunker, rambled about all sorts of things, boasted about his military service at the end of the war and told me he was 47 years old. Which indeed, I now see that he indeed was in 1972 and that he had been in the Navy (his Guardian obituaries are here).
And then it happened. He started to force himself on top of me, ramming his hands and arms down under my clothing (top and bottom), stroking my skin, and up round my back before climbing on top of me, with his suffused red walrus-like face right up against mine, reeking of whisky. Being 14 I was just strong enough to push him off, but only with considerable difficulty.
Petrified, I made a dash for the compartment door and ran through the train until I reached the guard’s van at the rear. I do not remember the guard being there, but I sat in a corridor beside the cage that held the mail sacks for some considerable time. Eventually, after a couple of hours and at a loss to know what to do next, I crawled back to the compartment. Cooper was out for the count, snoring deeply and still dressed. I climbed into the top bed and passed a fitful night.
Needless to say, nothing was said of the previous night. He was sober. We had breakfast at a hotel in Inverness and his wife Janet (d. 2010) collected us, driving us back to Skye in their Renault.
The next month in Skye passed with no further incident resembling that on the train. Cooper drank vast amounts, even routinely stopping on days out with us all in the car to visit pubs en route to swig more whisky. I dread to think how at risk we were on the nightmare roads of 1970s Skye. I don’t know if he was an alcoholic but he certainly had an alcohol problem.
The family had a dog called Goodman. Cooper was obsessed with commenting on the animal’s habit of licking its private parts. I do mean obsessed. He was always talking about it, “Go on Goodie”, he’d say, “lick your p****. Poor old Goodie, hasn’t had a **** for years!”
After four weeks I returned to London with his son. The train incident retreated into the past. At the time it was extremely frightening though I had no idea what else could have happened to me. I tried to mention it to my parents (now both deceased) but they did not want to know.
A decade later in 1981 I started working at the BBC. One day, by the lifts in Broadcasting House I saw Cooper. It was the first time since 1972. He looked at me aghast, clearly rattled. He knew. He said nothing and nor did I.
Jump on until early 2013 by when Operation Yewtree was running after the death of Jimmy Savile. I happened to know Meirion Jones, the journalist who broke the Savile story, from my time at the BBC, and told him about my experience at Cooper’s hands. Meirion put me in touch with Yewtree and I was interviewed by the police.
It transpired that no-one else had made a complaint about Cooper. I chose not to pursue the matter. It seemed so very long ago, and what would it achieve? But I was left with the uncomfortable knowledge that a well-known broadcaster and writer who was married and had two children had, when the opportunity presented itself, under the influence of drink, assaulted a minor of the same sex. I’ll never know what would have happened had I not thrown him off and done a runner.
Worse, now looking back, I have to ask myself, was he grooming me? Were the invitations first to Television Centre and then to Skye involving the travel arrangements with the shared compartment all part of a contrivance to create the opportunity? Did he have form? I suspect I will never know that either.
Nothing like that had ever happened to me before. Nothing like that happened afterwards whether involving Cooper or any other assailant. Whether Cooper ever assaulted anyone else, I have no idea.
I can’t pretend Cooper’s behaviour caused me any enduring distress or upset. It didn’t. It was certainly bewildering, and the memory lingered, but I really didn’t give it much thought for many years. It was only the mounting revelations about Savile and Glitter, as well as certain others, that brought it back. Mainly I was greatly relieved that I managed to avoid the worst of the indignities suffered by some of their victims.
However, every time I heard Cooper’s voice on the radio I used to wonder if anyone else knew what I knew about him. His rich gravelly voice sounded so good on radio, so authoritative and resonating in homes around the country. Yet my experience of him had been quite different.
Cooper died in 2014, not long after I’d told Yewtree, which (so far as I know) he knew nothing about. Why am I going public now? It’s always lurked in the back of my mind as a disturbing experience, mainly because it seemed so opportunistic and incongruous. That is by far and away the most rattling aspect of the story. Could it have been that impulsive? Is it conceivable he had never done anything like that before?
Should one incident like that colour a man’s reputation, especially when it’s based on the word of only one other person about an incident 51 years ago? De mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est (“nothing unless good is to be said about the dead”) is the saying.
In Anthony Trollope’s The Last Chronicle of Barset, Archdeacon Grantly says, “The proverb of De mortuis is founded on humbug”, and I rather think he was right.
Why tell the story now? Cooper belonged to a wider phenomenon of people with a public forum who seek to influence and dominate others, but who on closer examination turn out to be not what they seem, though it would be wrong to suggest he ever lectured anyone on their morality (so far as we know). We are all flawed, but some flaws are beyond the pale.
I had a lucky escape. I am only too mindful that untold numbers of people have not been so fortunate, whoever their attackers were.
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Read it and weep, or at least feel your blood boil! Two doctors attended the recent World Vaccine Congress in the U.S and report back their experiences. Fascinating, unbelievable and very reminiscent of a cult, I’d say. For instance, the chap from vaccine research at Mayo Clinic who got vax injured after his second clot shot but went on to have a third anyway now has debilitating tinnitus but sings the praises of the death jabs whilst hating anti-vaxxers who he blames for vax hesitancy. I think the LNPs have clearly migrated across his blood brain barrier!
”In February 2022, Poland reported suffering from significant tinnitus after receiving the second dose of “an mRNA vaccine.” At the time, Poland described his symptoms as “extraordinarily bothersome.” Nevertheless, he chose to receive a third dose (monovalent booster).
Poland’s commentary on the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines was extremely positive. He said the rapid deployment of the new therapy saved millions of lives and would have saved millions more if it weren’t for the disturbing trend of growing vaccine hesitancy.
I assumed that his vaccine-induced tinnitus had resolved over the last year. It was only at the end of the conference, several days later, when he told me personally that his symptoms were still debilitating, making his unmitigated support of these products even more astonishing.
Poland set the tone for the four-day conference in the first 10 minutes. In his mind, the COVID-19 pandemic was halted through the hard work of our regulatory agencies and the remarkable products borne of the mRNA platform.
The only failure came in the form of “inexplicable” vaccine hesitancy, a phenomenon driven by anti-vax pseudoscientists who are profiting from spreading baseless, fear-driven propaganda.
Combatting vaccine hesitancy is as big a challenge as protecting the world from the next deadly pathogen. Indeed, a significant portion of the events focused on strategies to dismantle the troubling “anti-vaxxers.”
Marks supported Poland’s position that the vaccine-hesitant are irrational, “It’s crazy that they don’t get how great vaccines are,” he said. “I am past trying to argue with people who think that vaccines are not safe.”
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/world-vaccine-congress/
Thanks for this link Mogs, an interesting read but also frightening. Thousands of people involved in this medico / pharma industry and they effectively know less about the “vaccine” shyte than me.
It’s also frightening that they seem to be putting a hell of a lot of emphasis and effort into tackling so-called ”vaccine hesitancy”. So they’re basically drilling down into the minutia of how they can best manipulate people who are exercising their fundamental human rights to bodily autonomy in declining a jab they feel they don’t need, by using a full-on assault of the tried and tested PsyOp. How effed up and unethical can you get?? Although, as we already know, medical ethics were well and truly left back in 2019, never to be seen again. Now anything goes, as long as it means a needle in as many arms as possible, by hook or by crook. And if you’ve read that you’ll know where I’m coming from when I say it’s like a cult mentality. Despite getting vax injured themselves…the sick, bent, psychopathic b’stards!
Completely agree. Dr Mike Yeadon’s latest take pulls no punches. I thought I had posted it yesterday but I am blowed if I can find it.
Fortunately, what this report does confirm is that many of these people are away with the faeries. We ‘anti-vaxxers’ will definitely NOT change our position. It doesn’t matter what psyop they think they can deploy it won’t work.
You’re right hux. They’re fully paid up members of Kool-Aid and the Gang! Delusional psychos..
No mention that Arab Countries have no black people running around from when they took slaves because they castrated them all. WHY? Slavery nonsense is all part of the War on the West and Whiteness. If your not white you can get away with anything.
There has been economic exploitation since civilisation began (as attested by the bevelled-rim bowls of 4th-millennium Uruk, for example). If we think that we have so little sin of our own to repent of that the main occupation of the righteous life should be to point the finger at the sins of others, committed in the past and tainting the present, why not focus on the industrial revolution? Conditions in the factories and mines were often appalling, child labour was common, and while wealthy capitalists profited most, there is a sense in which as heirs of the industrial revolution we all profit from their misery. Our civilisation is about to fall, and one of the things God has against her is its consumerism, the consumption of every sort of luxury produced at the expense of human souls (Rev 18:13). The exploitation of poor countries by rich countries, and of poor people by rich people, still goes on, and as beneficiaries we are all guilty of it.
But self-righteousness isn’t the height of moral superiority, it’s the height of moral self-delusion. It stinks as nothing else does, and when it gets hold of an entire society, the disease is terminal.
The UK and the USA are now unintentionally reaping themselves what they sowed when they went overboard continously guilt-tripping post WW2 Germans.
Part of me therefore thinks that it serves them right, but for that reason and not for the ones the zealots are giving.
The bigger part though thinks that such cr*p should be fought and stopped now, worldwide.
The UK and the USA are now unintentionally reaping themselves what they sowed when they went overboard continously guilt-tripping post WW2 Germans.
Well, not really. After the second world war, the anti-German war propaganda mostly kept running in order to ensure that Germany would really remain subdued this time. This means a couple of generations of people grew with the constant calls to fight largely imaginary fascists each and everywhere. This went to the point where fascist became pretty much synonymous with political opponent (eg, both the US left and the US right happily accuse each other of being fascists or Nazis). And that’s all which is happening in the wokiverse now: As always, the mission is Fight the fascists! and the proven methods for that are being employed.
Someone really needs to take back education from ‘brutally’ irrational apparatchiks like Daniel Kebede. According to Unherd, this guy is associated with the SWP (Socialist Workers Party) and he seems to believe that getting elected as NEU leader means he now has a mandate to (finally) achieve the communist revolution, reorganising society, where we are […] free from oppression, in his own words. The work of teachers is about teaching. It’s not supposed to be a convenient platform for extremist crackpots to preach to an impressionable audience. Someone who believes otherwise has no place in this job.
If a bellend like Kebede can become a teacher there is a massive fault in the recruitment and training process
Look at this stupid bint’s tweet from today. I swear she’s got a crush on Handcockwomble! Great to see the comments underneath. People see right through this disingenuous, arrogant shill:
https://twitter.com/IsabelOakeshott/status/1645775138237952000?cxt=HHwWgMC97Zfx-9YtAAAA
Apparently two years supplies of Midazolam were ordered and used in those early months of 2020. Oakshott is playing a stupid game.
Also taking into account her previous writings on him she seems suspiciously incapable of placing blame squarely at Hancockup’s door, in fact she’s barely critical of him at all. Always defending him. Very strange.
“Always defending him. Very strange.”
I agree Mogs, very strange. At the time these diaries began to be serialised I was decidedly ambivalent on Ms Oakshott and her stance but initially gave her a slight benefit of doubt. My current stance is that her position does not make sense. She is hiding something.
Nothing about Midazolam in the Lockdown Files?
Err, perhaps that’s because the Lockdown Files are a “limited hangout”.
These people destroying our heritage are the enemy.
Why are people so reluctant to grasp that pretty much all government policies since 97 ( it was happening before then, but at a very much slower pace) are about the utter destruction of the indigenous people of these islands, our culture, our achievements and our landscapes?
Is there a single significant policy that doesn’t have one or more of these effects?
100% in agreement.
They can’t “Build Back Better” until they have destroyed what we already have.
There’s no need to destroy these people, they’re perfectly accomplishing that themselves by not reproducing enough to keep their numbers at least stable (same phenomenon in all more-or-less Americanized societies where sex life has taken over the place formerly occupied by something like God, king and country). The Marxists (Kebede is one) are sensing another opportunity to take everything over here because a new ‘class’ of oppressed people fell from the sky by the grace of … well … Richard Dawson perhaps? Members of the established ruling class believe everyting’s fine provided they remain in control (Does anyone care about the skin colour, heritage or religion of a delivery serf on a zero hours contract?). Both will eventually find themselves surplus to requirements, as transmissionofflame (probably misspelled) so nicely put this, because our new compatriots will eventually bring all of their culture with them. This process won’t stop unless the Europeans stop their mad dash for ethnic suicide.
And this article from today’s TCW slots right in: George Soros.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-indoctrinators-part-1-george-soros/
“With OSF (the Open Society Foundation) the vehicle for his messiah complex, he is relentless in pursuing his agenda. Climate change, ‘refugees’, transgenderism and any woke dogma which undermines traditional liberal democracies are supported by him. Enlightenment values and rationality are scorned in favour of anti-science, magical thinking. The young are targeted, destroying their futures to ‘save the planet’, and mutilating themselves for the pernicious transgender trend.”
Yes, well, maybe in the hallowed halls of academe, but I’m with Chesterton. We will just need more rope.
‘We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet,
Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street.
It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first,
Our wrath come after Russia’s wrath and our wrath be the worst.
It may be we are meant to mark with our riot and our rest
God’s scorn for all men governing. It may be beer is best.
But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.
Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget’.
I haven’t surrendered.
Keep fighting.
Keep attacking.
A curious thing.
I have read Will Jones’s excellent piece quoting Professor Robert Tombs’s important historical analysis. I note it was posted nearly 21 hours ago, but only just showed up on my screen, despite emails and visiting website.
I have also read all the comments, including that from the ever reliable Mogwai, 19 hours ago. Hard to disagree with him or most of the other 22 comments.
BUT
Am I really the only DS reader who finds it remarkable, that amongst the archipelago of Oxbridge islets, long overrun by the fake scientists, the virtue signalling self haters, the uber-wokesters, the BLM and Wahabi and Trans sycophants, we have the undaunted Professor Tombs with his entirely genuine brickbats piled ready to defend truth against the next wave of attack battalions, whether from the CCP or the Students’ Union. (I know. Pretty much the same thing.)
I for one, salute the intelligence and bravery of Professor Tombs and wish him the very best of luck. He’ll certainly need it.
A problem is that much of the time only the ‘woke progressive’ side of the story is mentionned in most of the media.
People do not hear about the other side.
I take the anti-British propaganda as a compliment: someone obviously fears Britain and the British Commonwealth greatly to put so much effort into discrediting it. The amount of times I have seen people earnestly popping-up on the Internet to share their stories, without presenting actual evidence, about how the British Empire is secretly still intact with the British monarch tyrannically ruling the whole world and how the City of London is not actually a square mile of land where many financial firms are based, but a secret cult controlling everything, is incredible. They even went so far as to slander Cecil Rhodes, whom most people had probably never heard of, as a racist and call for the removal of hist statue. Even seeming hero’s of the anti-lockdown movement, Reiner Fuellmich, David Martin and Robert Malone have engaged in anti-British propaganda rather than looking towards the more obvious suspects of malevolent global power in today’s world. Perhaps the real villains fear the notion, embodied by the British Commonwealth, that people of diverse cultures, backgrounds, beliefs and nationalities can actually get along with one another peacefully and have as their figurehead a person who does not actually have much in the way of former power over them. So such a thing is the stuff of nightmares to wannabe tyrants.