Do we like them?

Do we like Roger Cook?

Our score: 6 out of 10. Nothing harmful or dodgy turned up, but the reporting is mostly career profiles, so there's too little to score higher.

Roger Cook was born in Bristol in 1940, during the Blitz, into a musical family, and he started out in vocal groups. From 1965 he wrote with fellow Bristolian Roger Greenaway, and their early hits included The Fortunes' You've Got Your Troubles.

In 1969 he joined the pop group Blue Mink, and when the band folded in 1975 he moved to the US and eventually settled in Nashville. In 1977 he had his first country number one with Crystal Gayle's Talking In Your Sleep, and later wrote for Don Williams, George Strait and John Prine. Not a bad second act for a bloke from Bristol.

His best-known song has a fun origin. Greenaway told Songwriting Magazine that he and Cook wrote about eight bars of melody on holiday in Portugal. It was turned into a Coca-Cola radio commercial around 1970, with Bill Backer rewriting the words, and it became I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing.

On the harm check, we went looking and came up empty. Searches on LGBTQ+ people, women, climate, vaccines and politics turned up no statements or campaigns from him, and nothing about the company he keeps beyond his songwriting partners. That's an absence of evidence rather than a deep dive, since most coverage is about the music.

On the good-person side, the search found no court cases, lawsuits or allegations involving him. The recognition is real: he is described as the first and only British representative in the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and he and Greenaway won two Ivor Novello Awards for Songwriters of the Year. We didn't find charity work to point to, so that's honestly the whole list.