Profile: Andy Coulson

Andy Coulson had a newspaper career before working for the Tories

Questions are being asked about the role of Andy Coulson, the Conservative Party's director of communications, amid allegations that the News of the World was engaged in a widespread phone-hacking operation during his time as editor of the newspaper.

Andy Coulson has come a long way since starting out as a reporter on a regional newspaper.

Born in 1968, he was brought up in Wickford, in Essex, and educated at the local state school, Beauchamps Comprehensive.

The devoted Tottenham Hotspurs fan began his career at the Basildon Evening Echo, before he joined the Sun and began to rise rapidly through the ranks of News International.

His progress led him to being briefly poached to work at the Daily Mail, before he was tempted back to the Sun, where he edited the newspaper's Bizarre pop gossip column.

He went on to become the News of the World's deputy editor in 2000 and in 2003 succeeded Rebekah Wade as editor.

His reign saw a string of old-fashioned tabloid exclusives, lifting the lid on the private lives of David Beckham, David Blunkett and Sven Goran Eriksson.

The paper won the Press Gazette Newspaper of the Year award in 2005.

'On my watch'

The Independent quotes Mr Coulson as saying on receiving the award: "The News of the World doesn't pretend to do anything other than reveal big stories and titillate and entertain the public, while exposing crime and hypocrisy."

But Mr Coulson quit as editor in January 2007 on the day Clive Goodman, the paper's former royal editor, was jailed for four months for illegal phone tapping.

Mr Coulson said he took "ultimate responsibility" for the scandal, but a Press Complaints Commission investigation found no evidence that he or anyone else at the paper had been aware of Goodman's activities.

His resignation statement said Goodman's actions were "entirely wrong and I deeply regret that they happened on my watch".

Mr Coulson, a close friend of former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan, became the Conservative Party's director of communications, in May 2007.

Some reports suggested he was awarded a salary of about £475,000.

At the time of the appointment, a Tory spokesman said the party was satisfied Mr Coulson had not been to blame for the phone-hacking scandal.

According to the Observer, Martin Dunn, editor of the New York Daily News once described Mr Coulson as "charming, intelligent, handsome and non-sleazy, which will make him a total rarity in British politics".