Comedian Billy Connolly has announced new film and touring plans despite facing ill health. Mark Coles explores how Connolly has long used humour to defy serious adversity. Childhood abuse and alcoholism have been countered by a rich musical, comedy and acting career. In this profile of the Glasgow welder who became a global star, Connolly's own performances and voice are mixed with the thoughts of those who know him well - including singer Barbara Dickson and producer John Lloyd. Producers: Heb...
Sep 21, 2013•14 min
Mark Coles profiles Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, a key figure in the Syria crisis. Has this chain-smoking, vodka-loving diplomat managed to restore Russian power? Those who've dealt with him tell us just why he's such a formidable opponent, and how he survived the collapse of the Soviet Union to put Russian diplomacy back at the centre of world affairs. Producers: Chris Bowlby and Smita Patel.
Sep 14, 2013•14 min
Chris Bowlby profiles German Chancellor Angela Merkel - always underestimated, physicist and ruthless politician, the woman at the centre of the eurozone crisis. What has shaped a figure who grew up under East German communism, came to dominate united German politics and proclaims her love of football and opera? And as her friendship with David Cameron deepens, might she be key to Britain's EU future? Producer: Chris Bowlby Editor: Richard Knight.
Sep 07, 2013•14 min
Mark Coles explores the life of US Secretary of State, John Kerry, who is taking a global leadership role over Syria. As President Obama said when he nominated him for Secretary of State, "Kerry's entire life prepared him for this role." One of his childhood friends tells us that Secretary Kerry has kept the same principles he held as a young man at Yale. But others see him as a man of contradictions: a Vietnam veteran who lead the anti-war movement, then voted for war in Iraq. What are his guid...
Sep 02, 2013•14 min
Edward Stourton profiles the Commander of Egypt's Armed Forces, General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, now the most powerful man in Egypt. General al-Sisi was appointed Defence Minister and Head of the Army by President Morsi in August 2012, and he was thought by many to be sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood. But he was instrumental in Morsi's downfall in July and oversaw the subsequent violent suppression of Muslim Brotherhood supporters. His former teacher from the US Army War College is among those...
Aug 24, 2013•14 min
Jane Deith profiles Mo Farah. This week he became the first British man - and only second man ever - to hold the Olympic and World 10,000m and 5,000m titles. He was born in Somalia and moved to Britain as a young boy, where his athletic journey began. But it was an unusual one for such a successful athlete - he needed cajoling, ran the wrong way in cross-country races and enjoyed playing to the crowd. Mo Farah was born to run. But he wasn't destined to win. Producer: Helena Merriman....
Aug 17, 2013•14 min
Chris Bowlby profiles the new governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, who unveiled his economic strategy this week. Heralded as 'the outstanding central banker of his generation' by George Osborne, Mr Carney now faces the task of guiding the UK's economy towards full recovery. Since arriving in London he has caused a stir by arriving to work on his first day by tube and unveiling Jane Austen as the face on the new £10 notes. He has come a long way from his roots in the remoteness of Canada...
Aug 10, 2013•14 min
Mary Ann Sieghart profiles Haifaa Al-Mansour, Saudi Arabia's first female film director. Haifaa Al-Mansour directed the recently-released Wadjda, the first film entirely shot in Saudi Arabia. The film follows the dreams of an 11-year-old girl who is desperate to own a bike, and was partly inspired by Al-Mansour's early years, growing up in a small town near Riyadh. After working for an oil company, Haifaa al-Mansour decided to become a film-maker, using some of her 11 willing siblings to help he...
Aug 03, 2013•14 min
Helen Grady profiles Professor Sir Andre Geim who is one of the most unusual scientists working in Britain - perhaps the world - today. This week he was awarded the Royal Society's Copley Medal, believed to be the world's oldest science prize, for his ground-breaking experiments using graphene - thought by many to be the miracle material of the 21st century. He is also a winner of both the Ig Nobel Prize for improbable research and the real Nobel Prize in Physics. "What we should be doing with i...
Jul 27, 2013•14 min
Edward Stourton profiles Samantha Cameron. There's been debate this week about the degree to which her views influence government policy. But what do we actually know about the Prime Minister's wife? The daughter of a baronet with a family estate in Lincolnshire, Samantha Cameron was born Samantha Sheffield. She grew up in Oxfordshire but moved to Marlborough College in Wiltshire, where she took her A' Levels before studying Art at Camberwell College and Bristol Polytechnic. She met David Camero...
Jul 20, 2013•14 min
With the Ashes underway, Mark Coles profiles the England cricket captain Alastair Cook. Born on Christmas Day in 1984, Cook's first career was as a chorister at St Paul's Cathedral. A talented musician, he also studied the clarinet and the saxophone but cricket soon took over and he made his England Test debut at 21, scoring a century. He's hit more Test centuries for England than any other player but shuns celebrity and spends his spare time sheep farming.
Jul 13, 2013•14 min
This week the football world ascended dizzying heights of breathlessness over the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson. But as one footballing titan steps down, another - a man who is, in some ways, the antithesis of Sir Alex - is about to step up to take on one of the highest-profile jobs in world football. Tim Franks profiles Pep Guardiola, and asks whether he could be Sir Alex's successor as perhaps the most successful manager in the game.
May 11, 2013•14 min
As she wages war against tax avoidance, Margaret Hodge - Chair of the Public Accounts Committee - is enjoying a blazing Indian summer in her political life. As Edward Stourton discovers, her political journey is set against the background of a turbulent personal life that began as the daughter of Jewish refugees in Egypt.
May 04, 2013•14 min
Alisher Usmanov has just been named the richest man in Britain. Born in Uzbekistan, Usmanov made his fortune in the collapsing Soviet Union. His empire has stretched from plastic bags to minerals, telecoms, Facebook and Arsenal Football Club. But, as Mark Coles reports, Usmanov's rise has not been straightforward, nor free of controversy.
Apr 27, 2013•14 min
Mark Coles profiles the long-serving and influential head of the FBI, Robert Mueller. Mueller took on the job one week before the 2001 World Trade Center attacks. Now, as he approaches retirement, the FBI is again dealing with the aftermath of an attack on American soil. The squared-jawed Princeton graduate was decorated for bravery during the Vietnam War before training as a lawyer. Dissatisfied with private practice, he found a government job as assistant US attorney in San Francisco - a move ...
Apr 20, 2013•14 min
Mary Ann Seighart profiles Elizabeth Llewellyn, the daughter of Jamaican immigrants, who had an obvious talent for singing from an early age. Her school-teachers in south London encouraged her to take lessons and go to concerts, and she won a place at the Royal Northern College of Music. But ill-health forced her to drop out. She then pursued an alternative career in IT recruitment, her talent lying dormant. But when, years later, she joined an amateur choir, her new colleagues urged her to take...
Apr 13, 2013•14 min
Amazon first became the world's biggest bookshop and then went on to revolutionise shopping as we know it. What began in 1994 as a small start-up in a Seattle suburb has become arguably the most significant technology company on the planet. Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder, is now a billionaire many times over. Bezos rarely makes public pronouncements and avoids media interviews. Those who have worked with him describe him as a hands-on manager, who plans the grand strategy as a well as the tiny det...
Apr 06, 2013•14 min
Mary Ann Sieghart profiles the Reverend Lucy Winkett, Rector of St James's Piccadilly, and a former Canon of St Paul's Cathedral in London. Many inside the Church see her as favourite to become the first female bishop of the Church of England, if the rules change. Lucy Winkett read history at Cambridge before studying theology, and then trained as a soprano at the Royal College of Music for a year, even though she'd already decided to enter the priesthood. She uses her musical and creative side ...
Mar 30, 2013•14 min
Chris Bowlby looks at the 22-year old Norwegian chess player Magnus Carlsen. He has the highest rating in the world ever and has been called the Mozart of chess. He is currently in London playing the tournament that will determine which top player gets to challenge the reigning world champion, Vishy Anand, for that title. Carlsen has been amazing the world of chess since he was a child. He became a Grandmaster after just four years of playing, when he was thirteen. He also achieved a draw agains...
Mar 22, 2013•14 min
Chris Bowlby profiles the British-educated Chinese property billionaire Zhang Xin, one of the most powerful women in business. She is in advanced talks to buy 40 per cent of Manhattan's iconic General Motors building. Zhang Xin stands out as the high-profile CEO of the prominent, upmarket property developer SoHoChina, which she founded with her husband. Unusually for Chinese billionaires, she is also a philanthropist and speaks out about issues ranging from democracy to smog, in the internationa...
Mar 16, 2013•14 min
Justin Bieber, the 19-year-old Canadian pop star, is an internet phenomenon with 35 million Twitter followers. His first hit is the most-watched video in YouTube history. He has upset fans on his UK tour by keeping them waiting before taking the stage, prompting some to suggest that the pressure of such extraordinary fame, experienced at such a young age, is beginning to show. Although Justin Bieber came to fame as a musical prodigy, who found his audience through the internet, these days his po...
Mar 09, 2013•14 min
Beppe Grillo has achieved a stunning success in the Italian elections with the performance of the new citizens' protest network - the Five Star Movement. He is its guiding star, a comedian-turned politician. The movement emerged from the web and took its argument into town squares all over Italy. The citizen activists oppose what they regard as the corrupted, self-serving traditional parties - the entire failed political establishment. The movement has connected with huge numbers of Italians who...
Mar 02, 2013•14 min
Mike Ashley began his business career as a teenager with a single shop in 1980s Maidenhead. Now his international Sports Direct empire makes him millions. Among his more recent acquisitions was Newcastle United football club. Chris Bowlby searches for the secret behind Ashley's huge retail success, and discovers what happened when a southerner who hates publicity tried to win over the Geordie faithful.
Feb 23, 2013•14 min
Designer Tom Ford has become a brand in his own right. Running his own label, producing and directing the film 'A Single Man' and dressing the stars are just some of his successes. Now as he prepares his first full scale catwalk show for London Fashion Week, he's credited with attracting record interest and unprecedented numbers of US buyers to the event. In the 1990s he turned around the fortunes of Gucci, the luxury fashion house and revolutionised the luxury brand market. Despite controversia...
Feb 16, 2013•14 min
John Brennan, President Obama's trusted counter terror advisor has been nominated to head the Central Intelligence Agency amidst a storm of controversy. Despite being a career CIA man for more than 25 years, he's now at the centre of American foreign policy dilemmas, including questions about the use of drones, waterboarding techniques and the future of the world's most powerful intelligence agency. A Catholic basketball player, turned academic and fluent Arabic speaker, Brennan has risen throug...
Feb 09, 2013•14 min
Sir Philip Green is one of the UK's most successful, and colourful, businessmen; his stores are estimated to make up 10 per cent of the high street and his wealth runs into the billions. This week he sold a stake in his flagship fashion chains Topshop and Topman for a reported £500 million. Lesley Curwen profiles the man who is perhaps the most successful retailer of his generation, with contributions from Sir Stuart Rose, Bill Kenwright and Kate Phelan. Producers: Ben Crighton and Hannah Barnes...
Dec 08, 2012•14 min
The UK Independence Party has been in the news a lot lately: two of its supporters in Rotherham had their foster children taken away from them because of their UKIP affiliation; Conservative Party deputy chairman Michael Fabricant suggested the Tories might be wise to enter into a pact with UKIP at the 2015 general election; and rumours surfaced of a possible defection of several Conservative MPs to the anti-EU party. And then, of course, there were three Westminster by-elections in which UKIP r...
Dec 01, 2012•14 min
Mary Ann Sieghart profiles the Australian political strategist Lynton Crosby.
Nov 24, 2012•14 min
Mark Coles profiles Abu Qatada, the radical Islamic cleric described by the Home Secretary as "a dangerous man, a suspected terrorist, who is accused of serious crimes in Jordan". Seen by some as Britain's most wanted man and Osama Bin Laden's right hand man in Europe , the Palestinian-Jordanian scholar arrived in the UK in 1993 seeking asylum and claiming he had been tortured in Jordan. This week, after serving seven years, without charge, in a British prison, a court ruled that he cannot be de...
Nov 17, 2012•14 min
Mark Coles profiles the controversial Conservative MP Nadine Dorries, who has been suspended from her party for taking part in the reality TV show "I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here". Dorries - a self-proclaimed council estate Scouser not afraid of speaking her mind - left school with few qualifications but went on to become a hospital nurse before setting up a successful company providing childcare services to working parents. Then she astonished her mother by entering politics. In the House ...
Nov 10, 2012•14 min
