Crick is new political editor

Watch Michael's reports

It's a chilling scene for any politician: a slightly battered microphone spears the crowd, an uncomfortable question preceded by words to stop the heart: "Michael Crick, BBC Newsnight".

Today the phrase Political Editor can be appended to that introduction because Michael has been appointed as Martha Kearney's successor.

From ITN trainee through Channel 4 News and Panorama, Michael arrived at Newsnight in 1992 and has been covering politics and more ever since.

At the heart of the programme's Westminster coverage, he's spent general elections in helicopters and doggedly pursued some of the most famous and infamous MPs in an effort to lift the veil on parliamentary goings on.

RTS awards

Michael Crick has also appeared on Have I Got News For You World Cup diary See Michael's school picture

In 2002, Michael won his second RTS award for his Panorama special programme on the life of Jeffrey Archer.

An avid football fan - well Manchester United - Michael reported on the 2006 World Cup in Germany for Newsnight - filing an increasingly bizarre diary mostly concerning his lack of clean socks.

Born in 1958, Crick was educated at Manchester Grammar School (see his form photo for early evidence of his "outgoing" nature) and New College, Oxford, where he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics, founded the Oxford Handbook, edited Cherwell, and was President of the Oxford Union.