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Producer-Director-Writer. Highly experienced, skilled print and radio journalist, who was Network Editor and Intake Editor of Independent Radio News before becoming the Producer/Presenter of the ground-breaking ‘Tony Cook’s Talking Sport’ on LBC. He joined Praxis Films Ltd. and produced over 50 documentaries, current affairs and factual programmes. These include Cutting Edge, Dispatches, Secret Lives (perhaps most notably the much lauded “Marie Stopes” biography film), Secret History and various series.
Tony is a highly experienced and adept interviewer. He has grilled the great and the good, from Cassius Clay to Tony Blair, Prince Phillip to Martin McGuiness, interviewed many ordinary yet extraordinary folk, worked alone and in the press pack, waded though mounds of official reports and tracked individuals down who did not want to be found.
A specialist highly, trained researcher, especially skilled at digging against all advice and often against all odds. Tony headed the Praxis research team that produced the award winning Channel 4 documentary on “Bloody Sunday”. The team that interviewed over 200 people present on Sunday January 30th 1970 when a civil rights march in Derry, Northern Ireland, saw 13 people shot dead, and 13 people shot and injured by the British army. The team also found and interviewed a dozen soldiers involved, without any help from the authorities.
Tony increasingly specialises in New Media and Corporate Social Responsibility with a variety of projects in train. See our Corporate Responsibility page.
He is also a skilled media trainer, having worked with people as varied as top politicians and the English Test Cricket team to sharpen their media skills.
A director of Praxis Films Ltd., Tony also runs ABCtales.com, BigIssueLists.co.uk and GetEthical.com in a social business with Body Shop founder, Gordon Roddick and Big Issue founder, John Bird. He was a co-founder of the radical Red Pepper magazine, and sits on a number of national boards for the Arts, with special interests in film and writing for the socially excluded. |
Producer-Director-Writer. Originally trained as a lawyer and then as a journalist, he has produced many of and often directed the majority of the 200 Praxis broadcast films he has been involved with.Also worked as:
- Development Producer or Producer-Director for Granada, Tyne Tees and Yorkshire TV;
- As Vice President, Creative Director and Head of Research, Development and Production for UPI Film and TV LLP, the audio visual arm of UPI, the renowned multi Pulitzer prize winning wire service in Washington;
- As Executive Producer on variety of films, made by young filmmakers for Channel 4.
Notable broadcast credits include:: a raft of Cutting Edge films, many Dispatches, Secret History (including the acclaimed “Bloody Sunday” documentary), Secret Lives (including his own favourite on Holiday Camp King “Billy Butlin”) and numerous one offs and series. Called to give evidence at the Bloody Sunday Inquiry as a result of Praxis work on that project. See www.bloody-sunday-inquiry.org.uk.
Long been interested in media skills training and media education. A Careers Advisor with Skillset, the highly respected and increasingly influential Skills Council for the Audio Visual Industries in the UK, and Course and Training advisor to various media industry bodies. A trained and accomplished teacher from school to University and professional levels, John at present also runs a specialist Film Academy for 16 to 19 year olds in Surrey with many students going on to film schools in the UK, Europe, USA and Australia.
Praxis courses will use established and experienced: producers, APs, researchers, writers, journalists, lawyers, business people and directors as required. Details of such tbc in due course. |
