Doctors - even those leading their field - rarely become household names. Fertility expert Lord Winston is so familiar to millions he even beat celebrity cook Delia Smith in a recent "Power List" poll.

Made a Labour life peer in 1995, Professor Robert Winston is lauded as much for his numerous appearances in front of the TV camera as for his efforts to help childless couples.

Indeed, he presented the 1980 medical show Your Life in Their Hands before he had established himself as a pioneer of in vitro fertilisation treatment.

Lord Winston has since become the face of medical science on the BBC, fronting such series as Making Babies, The Human Body and The Secret Life of Twins.

The corporation is currently working with Lord Winston on Child of Our Time - a programme which will chart the progress of babies born during the first month of 2000.

Despite the knockabout image he portrays in his award-winning documentaries - which has seen the peer ride a roller coaster and put a sample of his own sperm under the microscope - Lord Winston is deadly serious about his research.

Fertile mind

A respected academic, Lord Winston is a professor of fertility studies at Imperial College London, founder member of the British Fertility Society and has held posts at universities around the world.

However, it is his work at London's Hammersmith Hospital helping couples unable to conceive naturally which has captured the public's imagination.

The walls of Lord Winston's office are famously plastered with pictures of the "miracle" babies he has helped into the world.

The 59-year-old doctor is not one to rest on his laurels. His clinic has seen its success rate fall as couples who have failed with "test tube" treatment elsewhere beat a path to his door.

In response he has sought to refine the techniques of fertilising eggs outside the female body - to both improve on the 15% success rate and reduce the average £2,000 price tag for the treatment.

Lord Winston is also one of only four medics trusted by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority to carry out "pre-implantation genetic diagnosis".

Moral maze

The process allows embryos containing defects to be screened before being placed back into the womb.

Advances of this sort have opened IVF clinics to accusations that they are "playing God" or seeking to produce "designer babies".

Lord Winston has long refuted such claims, arguing that doctors should be given an even freer hand to carry out embryo research.

Journalist John Humphrys - who became a post-vasectomy father thanks to Winston - says the peer is well able to navigate the moral minefield of embryology.

"Winston - a devout Jew - strikes me as a deeply moral man as well as a great doctor," wrote Humphrys in the Times.

Indeed, the medic himself says his religious faith is the guiding light of his fertility work.

Although a Labour peer, Prime Minister Tony Blair appeared on the This is Your Life show devoted to Winston, he has not shied away from criticising the government.

He slammed its plans to limit IVF treatment to women under 35 - saying it was more to do with funding that medical sense, and joined Lord Bragg and Lord Puttnam in calls against a proposed fox hunting ban.

Winston, perhaps putting his TV presenter hat back on, also put his name to an open letter pleading for more funds for the BBC following a select committee report dismissing the idea.