Reporting day by day

“When the folk of the south had a difficulty with a consumer problem in the 1960s, 70s and 80s they quite often threatened to write to Peter Clark. That’s me.

Having created British television’s first investigative programme, I never realised a monster had been born that would change my life.

I was bombarded with letters, telephone calls and personal approaches by people with problems ranging from dodgy cookers and crooked car dealers to high-handed government departments and heartless fraudsters.

Complaints Box was a one-man show so it was down to me to decide what cases were to be followed up for transmission as well as all the research and, of course, the final television presentation.

But there were times when I involved my wife Valerie to get a woman’s view.

It also helped that I was an experienced ex-national newspaper journalist, especially when it came to the tough legal decisions.

I named and shamed and occasionally lawyers would threaten to sue.

Like the firm representing a dry cleaners who had shrunk a woman’s highly expensive coat and would not compensate her. They said the shrinkage could not be proved. But I found a similar coat of the same size and transmitted the item.

The cleaners then spent a fortune over several months chasing the ITV lawyers, demanding compensation for the bad publicity. We saw them off.

A case that gave me a giggle involved a lazy lout who did not want to get a job.

He told his wife he was trying his best and, misguidedly, she felt sorry for him and complained to me that the job market was being unfair to him.

I interviewed the man on film and he sounded plausible. In fact he had not worked for ten years and never intended doing so.

What he did not know was that I had been in touch with the local bus company, who were short of drivers.

The manager was standing by to meet him.

So, as the recorded TV interview went on, I asked Mr Lazybones if he was sure he wanted to support his family and if so would he consider a job on the buses. He was trapped.

I then told him to accompany me straight away to the bus depot, our cameraman filming the whole episode including the encounter with the bus chief.

You should have seen our man’s face when he was told he could have a job – starting at 5 o’clock the following morning!

When a family complained that tinkers were off-loading old kitchen appliances over their wall in the middle of the night, I knew there would be fireworks if I got involved.

But I could not resist it.

With cameraman, sound recordist and lighting engineer, I set up a vigil on the night the tinkers usually got rid of their unwanted stuff.

Sure enough, at 3.30am they arrived on their cart. Then over the wall came all manner of useless scrap. We got some great shots until they realised what was going on.

I leapt forward with the microphone, snapping: “What do you think you are up to? This is private property.” I lived to regret those remarks.

One of them brandished a hammer and I fled, petrified. He chased after me but I got away.

And if this episode was not bad enough, my cameraman filmed the whole thing. Needless to say he had a wry smile on his face.

I ran Complaints Box for 20 years and for the same time I compiled and presented Crime Desk, aimed at helping police solve and prevent crime. Both programmes were rewarding but also, on occasions, risky.

So it was no surprise when Hampshire police told me a threat had been made against my life and that they were taking it seriously.

An officer was sent to my home in Hedge End to protect Valerie and me and our sons Jeremy and Nicholas.

When the officer went off duty I thought that was it. No such thing. I had round-the-clock protection for weeks.

One of the chaps actually came with me to judge a beauty contest!

Crime Desk nabbed hundreds of criminals and at the scene of a robbery police found the words Clark the Nark scrawled on a wall.

On the crime prevention side, I staged daring crimes using offduty police as “actors”, to test the reactions of people.

Few got car numbers, descriptions or even rang the police.

Using the hidden camera technique we also showed police posing as bogus callers and crazily bearing milk bottle tops as badges being invited into houses unchallenged.

Then I would appear on the scene to dish out a wigging.

Clearly I was getting just too cheeky because Southern Television and the Daily Echo teamed up to turn the tables and put me through the same test.

They arrived at my house in a van marked PGO and with cameras rolling proceeded to hoodwink my wife Valerie into giving them the run of our house. She obviously thought they meant GPO!

That night on Day By Day I was told to look at a monitor set in the studio and give my reaction to a certain piece of film. I was gobsmacked.

The exercise was fun and further portrayed the message that you should beware of strangers at the door.

My exploits on Crime Desk, thanks largely to the people of Southampton, led to a documentary Take It From Us that was screened in Britain and America. It won two awards.

In my quarter of a century with ITV in the south, I was also senior newsreader for many years and was never allowed to forget the time I sprained my ankle and performed the bulletin with my foot in a bucket of water.”