Ask American Profile

Crook & Chase, Petula Clark, John Miller

Whatever happened to Crook & Chase? I really miss them on TV.
—Verla G., Illinois

Lorianne Crook and Charlie Chase are still on television—in separate shows. But the Great American Country channel is now featuring classic episodes of Crook & Chase, the nationally syndicated television variety show that aired in the 1990s. “I look back and it reminds me how wonderful those shows were,” Chase says. “Sure the hair is different, not much, but a little. But aside from that, we don’t look much different, and those shows go back to the mid-’90s. It really brings home once again the fact that we had a heck of a show there.” Since their nationally syndicated television variety show ended in 1999, both have moved on to other projects. Crook’s new show, Lorianne Crook’s Celebrity Kitchen, is a daily one-hour show with celebrity guests preparing healthy recipes using fresh, organic ingredients, as well as conversation and country music videos. Chase, meanwhile, has hosted Mornings on Fox 17 for more than two years. A celebrity interview and variety show, it airs on a Nashville, Tenn., television station. “I get up at 3:30 every morning,” Chase says. “I feel like I’m getting a head start on the world.” You also can check your local country radio station listings for The Crook & Chase Countdown, a syndicated show featuring a countdown of the Top 45 country hits each week.

Can you tell me whatever happened to singer Petula Clark?
—Jim W., Pennsylvania

The sweet-voiced English songbird, who made Downtown the place to be in 1964, may have disappeared from pop radio, but she’s never stopped singing. “I’ve been performing in front of audiences since I was a very young girl in England during World War II,” she says. “Although I consider myself somewhat shy, there is something about being on stage that allows me to really open up,” she says. “I enjoy the energy that an audience brings and I think American audiences are really the best. They know how to let a performer feel their affection and excitement.” In addition to touring and making records, Clark has starred in plays on Broadway and in London, most notably playing Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. She lives mainly in London, though she has homes in Geneva, Miami, and France. “I’ve had a wonderful career all over the world and I’ve been blessed with a wonderful family too,” she says. “I now have two grandchildren in the U.S. and they’re marvelous. I still enjoy singing, recording, writing songs and acting. It’s who I am, and I’ll keep on performing as long as people want to hear me.”

I enjoyed the news reports and expert commentary of former ABC reporter John Miller. Where is he now?
—Kathleen J., via e-mail

He’s heading up the Counter Terrorism Bureau of the Los Angeles Police Department. Miller spent more than 20 years as a TV journalist, until 1994, when he accepted a job as chief spokesman for New York Police Chief William Bratton. When Bratton left, Miller went back to reporting, joining ABC News in 1997. A year later he went to Afghanistan to interview Osama Bin Laden, then little-known to the American public. Miller went on to report on the growing danger of terrorism in the world, and of Bin Laden’s role in it. He developed an expertise on the subject, writing a book about Sept. 11, The Cell: Inside the 9/11 Plot and Why the FBI and CIA Failed To Stop It. When Bratton took the job of top cop in Los Angeles, he asked Miller to join him again, this time to advise him on homeland security. Though he was at the top of his game as a journalist, co-anchoring 20/20 with Barbara Walters, Miller accepted. “One of the things I found most appealing about journalism was that it offered you a front row seat to the greatest show on Earth,” he explains. “One of the things that I enjoy more about policing is that you don’t have to sit in the front row. You can be in the center ring.”

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