John Bercow

As the youngest Speaker of the House of Commons in recent times, John Bercow’s reforming zeal and outspoken manner have earned him both bouquets and brickbats.

Born in north London in 1963, Bercow was Britain's top-ranking junior tennis player until glandular fever ended his hopes of turning professional, though he remains a qualified tennis coach and used to be David Cameron's doubles partner.

In his programme he interviews his personal hero, Roger Federer, about staying motivated and pushy parents.

He took a First in Government at the University of Essex, where he was a right-wing student activist and, for a time, a member of the Conservative Monday Club.

After a spell in merchant banking, Bercow worked as a political lobbyist for the advertising agency Saatchi and Saatchi, while pursuing a fledgling political career, serving as deputy leader of the Conservative group on Lambeth Council.

He worked as special adviser to a number of ministers in the mid-1990s before being returned to the Commons for the safe Conservative seat of Buckingham in 1997.

He married Sally Illman, a Labour supporter, in 2002. The couple have three children.

And the man seen as a Thatcherite "attack dog" set out on a political journey which saw him resign from the Tory front bench team in the same year, after the party's MPs were ordered to vote against allowing unmarried couples to adopt children. He quit the shadow front bench for good two years later.

He was elected the 157th Speaker, to the dismay of some Tory MPs, in 2009, and vowed to demystify Parliament's rituals and make it more accessible to voters.