Fred Cooke of Salford turned 90 two days ago and the world has been beating a path to his door. If you haven't noticed, the backstreet boy educated at Blackpool grammar styles himself more grandly as Alastair Cooke, broadcaster extraordinaire. An honorable KBE, he would be Sir Alastair if he had not taken American citizenship more than half a century ago. If it sounds snobbish to draw attention to his humble origins, it should be reflected that the real snob is Cooke himself, who has spent a lifetime disguising them. But the fact that he opted to renounce his British passport in 1941--just when his country needed all the wartime help it could get--is hardly a matter for congratulation. Cooke has made a fortune out of his love affair with America, entrancing listeners with a weekly monologue that has won Radio 4 many devoted adherents. Part of the pull is the developed drawl. This is the man who gave the world 'midatlantic', the language of the disc jockey and public relations man. He sounds American to us and English to them, while in reality he has for decades belonged to neither. Cooke's world is an America that exists. largely in the imagination. He took ages to acknowledge the disaster that was Vietnam and even longer to wake up to Watergate. His politics have drifted to the right with age, and most of his opinions have been acquired on the golf course with fellow celebrities. He chased after stars on arrival in America, fixing up an interview with Charlie Chaplin and briefly becoming his friend. He told Cooke he could turn him into a fine light comedian instead he is an impressionist's dream. Cooke liked the sound of his first wife's name almost as much as he admired her good looks. But he found bringing up baby difficult and left her for the wife of his landlord. Women listeners were unimpressed when, in 1996, he declared on air that the fact that 4 % of women in the American armed forces were raped showed remarkable self-restraint on the part of Uncle Sam's soldiers. His arrogance in not allowing BBC editors to see his script. in advance worked, not for the first time, to his detriment. His defenders said he could not help living with the 1930s values he had acquired and somewhat dubiously went on to cite 'gallantry' as chief among them. Cooke's raconteur style. encouraged a whole generation of BBC men to think of themselves as more important than the story. His treacly tones were the model for the regular World Service reports From Our Own Correspondent, known as FOOCs in the business. They may yet be his epitaph. At the beginning of the passage the writer sounds critical of______.