Profile

Mhairi Black was yet to graduate when she was elected to the House of Commons in May - the youngest Member of Parliament for over a century. She overturned a 16,000 majority and ousted the veteran Labour MP Douglas Alexander to win Paisley and Renfrewshire South for the SNP. She's packed a lot in to the past few weeks: taking her seat in Parliament; sitting the final exam of her politics degree (d...

Mark Coles profiles the muckraker's muckraker, American journalist Seymour Hersh, who has challenged the official story of how Osama Bin Laden was killed. The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer is one of the world's most famous investigative reporters. He exposed both the My Lai massacre, when US soldiers killed hundreds of civilians during the Vietnam war, and the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US soldie...

The last couple of weeks of the election campaign - and the erroneously narrow polls which highlighted the role of The Queen in the event of a hung parliament - brought to the attention of the public a man who has held arguably one of the most important jobs in Britain since 2007, but who remains largely unknown. He's Sir Christopher Geidt, Private Secretary to The Queen. He is her adviser on poli...

Earlier this week, Loretta Lynch was sworn in as the new US Attorney General. Brought up in North Carolina the daughter of a Baptist minister father and a mother who picked cotton as a young girl, Lynch is the first black woman to hold the position of the nation's top law enforcement official. Harvard-educated Lynch worked at several private law firms and has been a federal prosecutor, winning hig...

Mark Coles profiles Aidan Turner, the Irish actor who stars in Poldark, the BBC's most successful drama for a decade. Turner has won legions of fans as the brooding, scythe-wielding Cornish hero in the classic costume drama remake. Producers: Ben Crighton and Chloe Hadjimatheou.

With five World Championship titles already under his belt, Ronnie 'The Rocket' O'Sullivan will compete in Sheffield this weekend hoping to secure a sixth. He is seen by many as the greatest snooker player in history. O'Sullivan arrived on the professional snooker scene when he was just a teenager, and immediately caused a storm. His talent was never in doubt. When on form, he is unbeatable. But h...

We learned this week that Jane Horrocks, Jim Broadbent and Fearne Cotton are to voice a new run of the hit children's TV series Teletubbies. It's estimated that around a billion children in over 120 countries have watched Teletubbies but there have been no new episodes since 2001, and the imminent return of Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa and Po has made news around the world. But who, or what, are th...

This week Comedy Central announced that South African comedian Trevor Noah is to take over from Jon Stewart as host of The Daily Show. It was a surprise to many that a relative unknown was set to take on one of America's leading talk shows, but Noah's star has been rising fast in recent years. Already a well-known face on British TV and radio, thanks to his award-winning Edinburgh Fringe show back...

On Thursday evening seven party leaders will meet in an ITV studio for the much-anticipated general election debate. Some of them are - it's fair to say - rather less well known than others. Many viewers - in England, at least - will not know all that much about Leanne Wood, the Plaid Cymru leader. So, on Profile this week, Mark Coles has been finding out what makes her tick. Producer: Gemma Newby...

Italy's famous couture couple Dolce & Gabbana have fallen out with Elton John over off-colour comments they made about IVF babies and gay families. But they have no shortage of fans. Becky Milligan profiles the characters behind one of the world's greatest - and most valuable - fashion empires. Producer: Chloe Hadjimatheou.

Mark Coles profiles the DUP's leader at Westminster, Nigel Dodds, one of a number of possible post-election kingmakers. Dodds, furious to find his party excluded from the leaders' debates, is now being watched carefully to see which - if any - other parties he might support in coalition. Nigel Dodds is conservative and religious. He is opposed to gay marriage and abortion and believes Britain woul...

Iraqi army and militia forces are fighting to take back Tikrit from the so-called Islamic State. Pulling the strings on the Iraqi side is an Iranian: Major-General Qassem Suleimani, the 'shadow commander' who has been described as the single most powerful operative in the Middle East. As the leader of the foreign branch of Iran's Revolutionary Guards - the Quds Force - Suleimani has emerged as Ira...

After a rocky campaign launch, the Green leader Natalie Bennett has been in the headlines this week. Mark Coles hears how she moved from journalism in provincial Australia to British politics, and has combined a love of cricket with feminist campaigning. How is she likely to fare amid the intense scrutiny of the coming election? Producer: Chris Bowlby.

The casually-dressed Greek finance minster Yanis Varoufakis has, in challenging the eurozone, become - almost overnight - one of the most important politicians in Europe. In this edition of Profile Mark Coles hears how Varoufakis grew up under the Greek colonels but was shaped by life in Thatcherite Britain before embarking on his unusually restless international career in economics. Producer: Chr...

Mark Coles profiles the former HSBC boss and trade minister Lord Green after an uncomfortable week in which revelations about HSBC's Swiss arm aiding tax evasion dominated the headlines. Once lauded as Britain's ethical banker, the ordained Church of England minister now finds himself under fire from the press and politicians. Producers: Keith Moore and James Melley.

Chris Bowlby profiles the veteran Labour MP and co-author of this week's report on hunger, Frank Field, who is one of the most unusual politicians in Britain. Variously described as "independent-minded" and a "free thinker" Field has been in Parliament for more than 30 years, representing Birkenhead, which contains some of the most deprived wards in the country. He had to fight off a hard left cha...

The presidential election in Afghanistan was drawn-out and controversial. The man who emerged as the winner is a United States-trained anthropologist who is described by friends as one of the world's leading intellectuals. Ashraf Ghani was born in Afghanistan, studied in Lebanon and the United States, and worked for years for the World Bank. As finance minister of Afghanistan he fell out with Pres...

One of the less likely political partnerships of recent years has been that of the Conservative Foreign Secretary William Hague and the Hollywood actor and director Angelina Jolie. They joined forces three years ago to campaign against rape as a weapon of war, and jointly hosted an international conference in London last summer. This week Mark Coles profiles the woman who brought them together; a...

Grace Mugabe has been an almost silent figure at her husband, Robert Mugabe's side for almost two decades. Now she is starting to flex her own political muscles, which some are interpreting as a bid for the Presidency. But does she have the skill and the support to secure the top job and a Mugabe dynasty? In December she will head Zanu-PF's Women's League which will make her one of the most powerf...

An insight into man of the moment, Benedict Cumberbatch. Code-breaker, physicist, Victorian sleuth. Overnight he became an object of obsession with a Cumber-cult following of adoring fans, spawning internet memes and slash fiction fantasies. What is it about Benedict Cumberbatch that makes the world go weak at the knees?

This week, with Republicans celebrating mid term election victories, Rand Paul - a Tea Party supporting ophthalmologist from Kentucky with only three years' experience in the Senate is fast emerging as one of the frontrunners to try to wrest the US Presidency back from the Democrats in 2016. Rand is part of a political dynasty although hardly from the Republican Party establishment. His father Ron...

Film director Christopher Nolan's latest $160m blockbuster Interstellar opens next week. Mark Coles examines the more humble beginnings of his film making career at University College London and asks how he has achieved the enviable knack of delivering huge box office takings and keeping the critics happy. Producer: Ben Carter.

Migration Watch UK's founder Sir Andrew Green is to become a member of the House of Lords. Presenter Jo Fidgen talks to Sir Andrew's old friends and colleagues in an attempt to find out what motivated this former ambassador to Syria and Saudi Arabia become one of the UK's most influential voices on immigration. Producer: Laura Gray.

Writer Richard Flanagan is the 2014 winner of the Man Booker Prize. His novel "The Narrow Road to the Deep North" is a story set among prisoners of war, forced by the Japanese to work on the Thai-Burma "death" railway. Presenter Becky Milligan looks into Flanagan's life in his native Tasmania where he is a prominent environmental campaigner and a regular at the local pub. She talks to Flanagan's c...

Douglas Carswell has become UKIP's first elected MP in Westminster. A free-thinking Eurosceptic Conservative, Carswell was never shy to criticise "our supine, spineless Parliament". Nonetheless his surprise defection in the summer shocked his friends and supporters. Ed Stourton asks what made him leave now and whether there's more to Douglas Carswell than jam-making and politics.