Faces of the week

Our regular look at some of the faces which have made the news this week. Above are Suzi Leather (main picture), with the Barclay brothers, Julia Prague, John Kerry and Nikki Page (clockwise from top left).

SUZI LEATHER

Suzi Leather, the chairwoman of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, has provoked strong criticism with her call for a change in the law to make it easier for single women and lesbian couples to get fertility treatment.

Negotiating safe passage through a minefield must be an extraordinarily difficult challenge for a woman usually described as outspoken. Soon after taking over her post nearly two years ago, Leather provided an early headline by declaring "there is more to life than having children".

Only a quarter of women undergoing IVF are successful

It wasn't the uncaring dismissal of a woman who'd already had three of her own, now teenagers, but advice to women that they shouldn't rush into motherhood if the time and the partner were not right.

Uppermost in Suzi Leather's mind, though, was the knowledge that for most women, IVF will not work.

"Three-quarters are going through all that distress, expense, discomfort and waiting and at the end of it, they are not pregnant," she says. "So what are we going to say to them if we define ourselves only by our being parents?"

She first attracted media attention as deputy chairwoman of the Foods Standards Agency, criticising the handling of the GM issue by industry and the government.

Charming in leather

As head of the fertility watchdog, she determined from the start to use the media to take its right-to-life issues to the public. At her first "meet the press" session, she lived up to her name by sporting leather trousers and jacket, and impressed with her charm and willingness to explain her stance.

But she also demonstrated a steely side by sacking the HFEA's chief executive, Maureen Dalziel, because she felt a different style was needed.

Will fathers become surplus to requirement?

Born in Uganda, Suzi Leather studied politics at Exeter University, where she met her future husband, politics lecturer Iain Hampsher-Monk. Later she trained in probation and social work and chaired an NHS Trust and healthy living centre, her efforts being acknowledged by an MBE.

She's a member of the Labour Party and belongs to the Christian Socialist Movement and the Child Poverty Action Group.

Now 47, she had an early introduction to the sometimes conflicting strains of a career - her mother was a doctor and psychosexual counsellor.

Consuming interest

Leather stepped off the career ladder for six years to bring up her children and now, paying credit to her family for easing the load, makes no complaints about her lot.

"I think the real difficulty comes at the bottom of the income spectrum where you are often doing several jobs just to feed your family. Those are the women who are up against it, not me."

Clinics must be satisfied about the welfare of the future child - it's not social engineering, it's being responsible Suzi Leather

Leather's role is to referee between competing interest groups.

But in the many dilemmas that increasingly arise, involving the ethical concerns of scientific advances, the cost of treatment and the thousands of women desperate to have a child, her instincts are with the consumer, the patient.

She wants to tighten up controls over the IVF clinics and equal access for all to their treatment. And she says it is "anachronistic for the law to include the statement about the child's need for a father".

But Suzi Leather knows better than most that in such an emotive field, controversy is guaranteed to hound her every word.

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BARCLAY BROTHERS The Barclay brothers threatened to step out of the shadows with their takeover bid for the Daily Telegraph. It's the latest in a series of planned high-profile deals which could expose them to brighter media glare. But the brothers, knighted by the Queen in 2000 for their services to charity, are not planning to join London's celebrity circuit. They value their privacy so highly that they live in a £60m home they built on the remote tax-haven island of Brecqhou, in the Channel Islands. Full story

JULIA PRAGUE Tony Blair has met few tougher opponents that 19-year-old medical student Julia Prague, who tackled him on top-up fees during a BBC Two Newsnight debate. She's already £10,000 in debt after two years of her six-year course in London and reckons it'll be £40,000 by the time she's 25. Julia Prague, who lives in north London with her parents, admitted she'd been nervous of challenging the prime minister, but said it was crucial that he had a realistic view of students' financial problems. Full story

JOHN KERRY The race to become the Democratic contender for the White House was thrown wide open by the surprise victory of John Kerry in the Iowa caucus. With John Edwards securing second place and Howard Dean a poor third, the Washington Post said rarely had conventional wisdom been "so thoroughly demolished". Kerry borrowed $6.4m against his Boston town house to fund his campaign. But then he's married to the baked bean heiress, Teresa Heinz, who inherited an estimated $500m when her first husband died. Full story

NIKKI PAGE It's an ill wind that blows a blonde bombshell's hair. Former model Nikki Page was ruffled by missing the short list of Conservative contenders for London mayor, but now looks set to mount a strong challenge to succeed Michael Portillo as Tory candidate in Kensington and Chelsea. It's thought Page, a businesswoman and companion of John Redwood, might yet overtake the favourite, Sir Malcolm Rifkind. "I can't see why women can't be girly and bright," she says.

Compiled by BBC News Profiles Unit's Chris Jones