Reproduced from Music Week 14 June, 1997

The Roger Cook-led 'expose' changed its references to Rush Release's Ian Titchener, after it emerged that his secretly-recorded interview was recorded for a different TV show 14 months ago.

And allegations were softened against a retailer who, in an advance version of the first show, was said to be shown swiping singles through his chart return machine without making a sale. It later emerged that the retailer, Wakefield-based Upfront Records, is not a chart return shop and has not supplied chart data to compilers Millward Brown since October.

Upfront's Mark Grant says he was filmed by the show after being asked to demonstrate how the chart machine worked.

'They kept pushing me to do it,' he says. 'I can't remember waving the wand over any records, but if I did I knew it wasn't working. They are going to make me out to be a crook, how they chop the film up, the way they cut it.' Grant's business associate Ann Evans says Grant showed the production team some chart return data, but adds that it was several months old, from when the shop supplied information to Millward Brown, Upfront, a dance music specialist, had been visited by members of the Cook Report team on May 20 after being approached to host a Debbie Currie PA.

Doubts about the tactics of the programme's producers were also raised by Rush Release's Ian Titchener, who was hired to do club promotion on the Currie record and was featured discussing buying-in teams.

The show admitted on Tuesday that his interview was filmed in February 1996 for another programme about the promotion of a fictitious pop star called Carrick Fear. Following threats of legal action, the show changed a line from the original rough cut and stated that Titchener had advised against using buying-in teams.

David Mannion, editor of The Cook Report, maintains that the second programme will still feature Grant despite the latest changes. Mannion says the retailer was never a major part of the investigation.

He also admits the script was changed, but says, 'It's nothing to do with watering down, but only to make it accurate and fair.' He also says using the Titchener interview from the Fear feature was not in contravention of the ITC regulations.

Mannion also dismisses charges that the only wrong-doing exposed had been engineered by the programme itself. 'I accept we chose the route we did so we could control it,' he says. 'We felt the best way to expose it was to remain control of our destiny. What we have done is quite legitimate and I think extraordinary.'

Mannion also justified embarrassing innocent parties, who were embroiled in the Currie hoax, in the name of investigative journalism. 'Sometimes it is necessary in order to expose something in the public interest,' he says.