Rogue Traders is a prime-time BBC One presenter-led investigative consumer affairs television series starring Matt Allwright an investigative journalist and presenter and his side-kick, 6'4" Dan Penteado who also works as a private investigator around Europe and the UK. Rogue Traders began in 2001 and is currently on its fifth series run on BBC One.
The pair secretly film unscrupulous door-to-door tradesmen and salesmen using hidden cameras and actors playing the "victim" (often elderly widows) and then use their evidence to confront them at the end of the programme. They usually use an honest tradesman to provide expert knowledge.
Among others, they have investigated the dubious working practices of double-glazing companies, second-hand car dealers, gas fitters, mechanics, roofers, plumbers and domestic rubbish collectors.
Allwright and Penteado use a Honda Super Blackbird motorcycle to travel from one place to another, and they are usually wearing biking leathers throughout the half-hour programme.
In the fourth series, Allwright upped the stakes by using a disguise, being made up as a seventy-year old Welsh man, Roger. He therefore fooled the "rogues" that he was Roger for some time before revealing his true identity. From the fifth series onwards, Matt Allwright has gone one step further and now has a choice of disguises. He can be made up into 22 year-old rocker Joe, middle aged eco-warrior Bob, the elderly Stan, or Jimmy, a "non-specific Eastern European builder".
Genre: Documentary, News
