• Guardian, Friday, December 23, 2005 12:15 PM

In one of the stranger, vaguely media-related stories of the year, various news outlets are reporting that the bones of the late broadcaster and author Alistair Cooke have been stolen by a New York criminal gang that trades body parts for profit. The report, originally published in the New York Daily News, "enraged" Cooke's stepdaughter, Holly Rumbold, according to a British radio station. "My stepfather is not the only one that's been used for this macabre purpose, and people are making billions of dollars out of it," she said. "He died in the night, and the undertakers collected him. His ashes, or what we thought were his ashes, were returned the next day.... I'm most shocked by the violation of the medical ethics that my stepfather's ancient and cancerous bones should have been passed off as healthy tissue to innocent patients in their quest for better health." Cooke died last year when his lung cancer spread to his bones, according to published accounts. He was 95. His "Letter From America" had been an extremely popular program on the BBC for many years.

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