Profile

With The Hunger Games topping cinema box-office charts, Gerry Northam profiles Suzanne Collins, the children's author who wrote the best-selling books on which the film is based. Her trilogy, set in a post-apocalypse America, is said to have been inspired by a combination of Greek myth and reality television as well as Collins' own upbringing as the daughter of an air-force officer who served in Vietnam. So how much do we know about the woman behind the phenomenon now being described as the US equivalent of Harry Potter?

As the threat of strike action by fuel tanker drivers looms over the Easter break, Mukul Devichand profiles Len McCluskey, the left winger who became general secretary of Unite in 2010. As the UK's biggest union and the Labour party's biggest donor, Unite is often in the headlines - many generated by its leader. Len McCluskey courted controversy by raising the prospect of strikes during the Olympics and was roundly criticised by both the Coalition and the Labour party. He has been an outspoken critic of Ed Miliband's leadership despite having played a key role in getting him elected. This week's Profile asks what Len McCluskey stands for and charts his journey from white-collar worker on the Liverpool docks to the most powerful trade union leader in the country.

Presenter: Mukul Devichand

Rosie Goldsmith profiles Dame Edna Everage, one of entertainment's most colourful characters . Dame Edna stepped into the public spotlight in 1950s as a dowdy Melbourne housewife. Over the years her popularity has soared and she has turned into a flamboyant "gigastar". She is known for her outlandish outfits, her wit and her derision of the cult of celebrity. But she is soon to leave the stage - her forthcoming tour of the UK will be her last. . Her manager, Barry Humphries, the man behind the creation of Dame Edna's stage persona, said "she's a little weary of touring and strange hotels".

Claire Bolderson profiles the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, who is working as an unpaid advisor to the UK Government helping open up policy making to the public. He's an information evangelist and his belief in the power of shared knowledge has driven the remarkable success of Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia. With entries on more than 20 million subjects looked at by more than 450 million people per month, Jimmy Wales' creation is one of that handful of internet successes that really have changed our lives. The programme hears from associates of Jimmy Wales and from his critics. And of course from the man himself.

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Chris Bowlby profiles the Socialist Party candidate for the French presidential elections, Francois Hollande. He's not a man well known to people in the UK. But within a couple of months, he could be a key figure in European politics and he's promising a radical challenge to economic orthodoxy in France and in the EU.

Among his proposals is a 75% tax rate for French euro millionaires and a re-negotiation of the EU's plan to save the Euro. Francois Hollande's challenge is personal not just political. A man once known as 'Mr Pudding', who rides around Paris on a moped, he says he'll be 'president normal', after the bling of the Sarkozy era.

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As two men begin life sentences for the murder of Stephen Lawrence, Andy Denwood profiles Imran Khan the lawyer who helped the teenager's family in their tireless fight for justice. When he was first contacted about the murder of a young black man in south London, Khan was a little known-solicitor who had qualified only 18 months earlier. He's since acted in some of the most high profile cases in recent British legal history. He represented the family of Victoria Climbie at the public inquiry into her death and has also been involved in major terrorist trials, including the 21st July London bombings.

Born in Karachi, Pakistan, in 1964, his family emigrated to England four years later. But life in 70's and 80's east London was tough. They were the only Asian family on their street and Khan would often get into fights at school. These early experiences are thought to have motivated him to fight against racism and injustice. They also shaped his political views and he stood in the 1997 general election for East Ham, representing Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party.

Producer: Samantha Fenwick

NB This programme has been edited from the original broadcast in which we wrongly described the Socialist Labour Party as "defunct".

Once described as the 'rock star version of Willie Wonka', Michael Acton Smith is emerging as one of the major players in Britain's high tech industry. You may not have heard of him, but any five to eleven year old will know of his Moshi Monsters video game website, where children tend a virtual pet. Moshi Monsters is growing rapidly and has 50 million members worldwide. Acton Smith began his first business in the late 1990s when he was not long out of university. Despite recent success he has suffered major setbacks in the past. Rory Cellan-Jones profiles the 37 year old who is already making waves beyond these shores.

Emily Buchanan profiles the Archbishop of Canterbury and examines his long struggle to stop the Anglican Church from fragmenting. Rowan Williams was tipped at an early age for high office and he is rated as possibly the most intellectually talented Archbishop of Canterbury for a thousand years. Yet after all the high hopes at his appointment, many are disappointed at what they see as a lack of key leadership qualities.

Dragged into seemingly endless rows about gay clergy and women bishops, Williams has had to endure a great deal of abuse from some members of the world's 77 million strong Anglican Communion. His period of office has even been described as a crucifixion. Is he misrepresented by Britain's tabloid press or does he actively court controversy?

His opposition to the Iraq war, his call for reparations for the slave trade and his candid predictions that last summer's riots could easily be repeated have raised eyebrows among parts of the political establishment. In 2008, he provoked an outcry after saying the application of Sharia law in England under certain circumstances was unavoidable.

A former Religious Affairs Correspondent, Emily Buchanan speaks to those who know him well including the Bishop of London, his school friend John Walters, his biographer Rupert Shortt, and the satirist Ian Hislop. She discovers how Rowan Williams' warm and sympathetic character, with the ability to see all sides of a question, is both his great strength and his weakness.

Producer: Lucy Ash.

Profile this week looks at the physicist Peter Higgs who in the 1960s predicted the existence of the so-called "God Particle" which scientists think they glimpsed at CERN this week.

The Higgs boson - which has so excited the scientific community this week - is a subatomic particle which gives mass to all matter and the quest to find it has been described as the holy grail of physics.

Peter Higgs made his prediction in the mid-1960s when he was a relatively young scientist, adding a crucial element to the Standard Model of the universe. At the time the significance of his work was not widely recognised or understood, and one leading scientific journal even turned down one of his early papers setting out his groundbreaking theory.

Higgs, now in his 80s, is very much a theoretical scientist. Colleagues say he has never excelled at practical experiments, and to this day he doesn't get on with computers.

What kind of man is he? Samira Ahmed talks to those who know the scientist, and asks what makes him tick.

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Samira Ahmed profiles Newt Gingrich, the American former Speaker of the House who is now a leading contender for the Republican nomination to run against Barack Obama in next year's US presidential election.

Earlier this year he was largely written off as a presidential contender when many of his staff left his campaign. But now he has made a dramatic comeback.

In the 1990s he was one of the Republicans who led the impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton for perjury over his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Yet at the same time Mr Gingrich was engaged in his own extra-marital affair with the woman who became his third wife.

Samira Ahmed talks to people who have known and worked with Newt Gingrich throughout his career. She hears of similarities between Gingrich and Clinton: both had difficult relationships with their step-fathers, dominating mothers, and both wanted to be transformational figures. But Gingrich appears to lack Clinton's personal charm.

Gingrich is both attacked and admired as an ideological politician, although some say he is driven by pragmatism and has an acute sense of what will play well with his supporters.

With a controversial past - he was fined $300,000 for ethics breaches in Congress - how has he turned things round?

Who is the real Newt Gingrich, and would he make a good president?

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