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Fred Cooke of Salford turned 90 two days ago and the world has been beating a path to his door. If you haven’t noticed, the backstreet boy educated at Bla c kpool grammar styles himself more grandly as Alastair Cooke, broadcaster extraor dinaire. An honorable KBE, he would be Sir Alastair if he had not taken American citizenship more than half a century ago.
If it sounds snobbish to draw attention to his humble origins, it should be reflected that the real snob is Cooke himself, who has spent a lifetime disguis ing them. But the fact that he opted to renounce his British passport in 1941 — just when his country needed all the wartime help it could get-is hardly a ma tter for congratulation.
Cooke has made a fortune out of his love affair with America, entrancing l isteners with a weekly monologue that has won Radio 4 many devoted adherents. Pa rt of the pull is the developed drawl. This is the man who gave the world “mida tlantic”, the language of the disc jockey and public relations man.
He sounds American to us and English to them, while in reality he has for decades belonged to neither. Cooke’s world is an America that exists largely in the imagination. He took ages to acknowledge the disaster that was Vietnam and e ven longer to wake up to Watergate. His politics have drifted to the right with age, and most of his opinions have been acquired on the golf course with fellow celebrities.
He chased after stars on arrival in America, Fixing up an interview with Ch arlie Chaplin and briefly becoming his friend. He told Cooke he could turn him i nto a fine light comedian; instead he is an impressionist’s dream.
Cooke liked the sound of his first wife’s name almost as much as he admir e d her good looks. But he found bringing up baby difficult and left her for the w ife of his landlord.Women listeners were unimpressed when, in 1996, he declared on air that th e fact that 4% of women in the American armed forces were raped showed remarkabl e self-restraint on the part of Uncle Sam’s soldiers. His arrogance in not allo w ing BBC editors to see his script in advance worked, not for the first time, to his detriment. His defenders said he could not help living with the 1930s values he had acquired and somewhat dubiously went on to cite “gallantry” as chief a mo ng them. Cooke’s raconteur style encouraged a whole generation of BBC men to th i nk of themselves as more important than the story. His treacly tones were the mo del for the regular World Service reports From Our Own Correspondent, known as F OOCs in the business. They may yet be his epitaph.
24. At the beginning of the passage the writer sounds critical of ___.
A. Cooke’s obscure origins
B. Cooke’s broadcasting style
C. Cooke’s American citizenship
D. Cooke’s fondness of America
25. The following adjectives can be suitably applied to Cooke EXCEPT ___.
A. old-fashioned
B. sincere
C. arrogant
D. popular
26. The writer comments on Cooke’s life and career in a slightly ___ tone.
A. ironic
B. detached
C. scathing
D. indifferent
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