In Northern Ireland during ‘the troubles’ paramilitaries on both sides made most of their money not from bank robberies or donations from America, but from extortion on building sites. And since at that time most of the building work was carried out on behalf of the Government, the British taxpayer was inadvertently funding terrorists. Builders who refused to pay protection money had their sites sabotaged, their equipment and materials trashed or stolen and their staff threatened and sometimes even murdered. Indeed, one of the programme’s brave informants, Jack Kielty, father of the popular comedian and TV host Patrick, sadly suffered that very fate. In the first of many TV stings, the Cook Report filmed an armed UDA brigadier demanding money from its presenter for ‘protecting’ a major, but fictitious development. In the court case that followed, Brigadier Eddie Sayers was sent down for ten years, largely on Cook Report evidence. The programme returned to investigate both UDA and IRA