David Cook

David Kenneth Cook (21 September 1940 – 16 September 2015) was a British author, screenwriter and actor. He is best known for the screen adaptation of his 1978 novel Walter, and was the first presenter of the UK TV programme Rainbow. He was born in Preston, Lancashire. He studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London, from 1959 to 1961. His first role was in the 1962 film adaptation of A Kind of Loving. Thereafter, he worked on both stage and television. He began to write novels and also for television in the early 1970s. He presented the first and second series of Rainbow, the first episode of which aired in October 1972. He left the show to concentrate on his writing before the third series in 1973, and was replaced as presenter by Geoffrey Hayes. Cook went on to write Walter, a novel about a young man with learning disabilities, that won the Hawthornden Prize in 1978. In 1982, the movie ()