Inside story: A lot to say for themselves

Compelling and infuriating by turns, the columnists of the national press have pet subjects that are guaranteed to get them foaming over the keyboard...

WHERE HE CAME FROM Essex boy and policeman's son. Educated at King Edward VI school in Chelmsford and Cambridge. Was medical writer before joining The Daily Telegraph, where he will shortly return as associate editor.

OBSESSIONS The evils of Europe, new Labour and political correctness.

HE SAYS "We live in a country where people find it nearly impossible to get an appointment with their GP ... where important government initiatives such as the Child Support Agency and the tax credits scheme have collapsed, causing mayhem. There have been warnings, disregarded by the Prime Minister, about how his insane plans to encourage 24-hour drinking are likely to increase violence, crime and the incidence of liver disease. None of this seems to bother our PM."

Stephen Glover, AGE 53

WHERE HE CAME FROM Son of a clergyman. Educated at Shrewsbury School. Entered Fleet Street as leader writer on The Daily Telegraph. Later a founder of this newspaper and editor ofIndependent on Sunday.

OBSESSIONS The BBC, the Tory party, modern manners.

HE SAYS "It seems not to occur to the modernisers that there are many aspects of modern Britain which millions of people do not like: the random violence, the squalor, the lack of respect - not to mention the sink estates, the poor schools, the dirty hospitals, as well as an often mendacious Government which seems to hold our ancient liberties in low esteem."

Melanie Phillips, AGE 54

WHERE SHE CAME FROM Started at Hemel Hempstead Evening Echo. Worked on left-wingNew Society then went toThe Guardian. Headed to The Mail via The Sunday Times.

OBSESSIONS Islamic extremism, anti-semitism, the "fantasist" Tony Blair, universities, the school system, the welfare state, Guardianistas

SHE SAYS "The value of higher education is quite simply being systematically destroyed by a philosophy straight out of Lewis Carroll's most surreal flights of imagination. Today's graduates find that a degree is likely to be merely a passport to the dole queue, or to a job as a traffic warden, porter or shop assistant."

Ann Widdecombe, AGE 58

WHERE SHE CAME FROM Former Tory MP. Reinvented herself as a media personality and reality TV contestant.

OBSESSIONS The Tory party, crime, the nanny state.

SHE SAYS "It should, however, be axiomatic in any society run with common sense that the state is not mummy, that once we ... enter the world of grown-ups we are responsible for our own choices. If those choices turn out badly we are responsible, and not the state, for putting them right. Instead, Britain runs itself like a giant nursery."

Frederick Forsyth, AGE 67

WHERE HE CAME FROM Best-selling spy writer. Trained at Norfolk's Eastern Daily Press, joined Reuters then the BBC.

OBSESSIONS The future of the Tory party, Baroness Thatcher, Mad Mullahs.

HE SAYS "It is now plain as a pikestaff that Iraq is heading straight for either a Shi'ite theocracy or Shia-versus-Sunni civil war and there is damn all we can do to stop it. The Conservative Party should swallow its vanity and denounce Tony Blair, the man who conned us all. Unfortunately the Tories, as they stumble ... from error to mistake, think they cannot admit they were wrong."

Vanessa Feltz, AGE 43

WHERE SHE CAME FROM Former chat show host. Read English at Cambridge. Has radio show on BBC London.

OBSESSIONS Weight, weddings, bashing Camilla Parker Bowles,working mothers.

SHE SAYS "The attempt to sell us Camilla Parker Bowles and erase Diana from our hearts and minds is in full swing. We're told she's the greatest asset to the realm since North Sea Oil. It seems the Old Duch believes her hype and has started to think of herself as something of a style icon. Wrong! Camilla was a frump before she had Charles's cash and she dresses like something out of panto now."

Polly Toynbee, AGE 58

WHERE SHE CAME FROM Daughter of literary critic Philip Toynbee. Started at The Observer in 1968, went to BBC, Independent and The Guardian.

OBSESSIONS Low pay, social injustice.

SHE SAYS "The underlying reason for remorseless social disadvantage remains a silent subject in Blair politics."

Simon Jenkins, AGE 62

WHERE HE CAME FROM Knighted in 2004. Has worked for Country Life, The Times, The Sunday Times,The Economist. Edited theEvening Standard and The Times before defecting to The Guardian.

OBSESSIONS Politics, buildings.

HE SAYS "Like Bilbo Baggins the [Tory] party has preferred to settle among the hobbits and dream of times past, rather than take the field against Labour's orcs."

Jonathan Freedland, AGE 38

WHERE HE CAME FROM Became BBC news trainee after brief spell on the now defunct Sunday Correspondent. Worked for The Washington Post and as correspondent for The Guardian. Has also written for the Jewish Chronicle and the Daily Mirror. Columnist for The Guardian since 1997.

OBSESSIONS Described as the favourite journalist of "doveish" Jews for his trenchant views on Israel. The monarchy.

HE SAYS "The Conservatives believed their power was so unchallengeable they regarded themselves as above the law. If Britons come to see the Windsors the same way, as ridden with royal sleaze, it will be a hard view to shift."

Boris Johnson, AGE 41

WHERE HE CAME FROM Worked briefly for The Times but was sacked for falsifying a quote. In 1988, joined The Daily Telegraph, where he still writes a column. Tory MP for Henley and editor of The Spectator.

OBSESSIONS Polly Toynbee, who was courted by Johnson's uncle, recalled him as a "fat, pink, naked baby" and added he had not changed much.

HE SAYS Excusing the lateness of his work: "Dark forces dragged me away from the keyboard, swirling forces of irresistible intensity and power."

Tom Utley, AGE 51

WHERE HE CAME FROM Son ofTelegraph journalist TE Utley. Started on local newspapers before joiningThe Daily Telegraph.

OBSESSIONS School fees and the rights of smokers.

HE SAYS "Smokers of the world unite! We have been bullied and nannied long enough. And if Tony Blair is tempted to follow the lead of Ireland and Italy, let us remind him that on 10.7 million voted Labour last time, but 15 million smoke."

Mark Steyn, AGE Forties

WHERE HE CAME FROM Left school at 16 to work as a DJ. Worked at BBC in New York, before going toThe Spectator as film critic. Before joining The Telegraph, he had a column inThe Independent. Also writes for the Chicago Sun-Times and The New York Sun.

OBSESSIONS Supported invasion of Iraq, dismissive of UN.

HE SAYS AfterDaily Mirror published faked pictures of British soldiers urinating on Iraqi prisoner of war: "The media aren't interested in showing you images that might rouse the American people to righteous anger, only images that will shame and demoralise them."

Victoria Newton, AGE 33

WHERE SHE CAME FROM Went from Liverpool to Fleet Street after university. Trained at The Express. Stints on The People and The Mail before returning to the Sun's Bizarre.

OBSESSIONS Celebrity.

SHE SAYS "Celebrities are well known for blowing their cash on weird rubbish. But Catherine Zeta Jones wins the prize for the oddest purchase yet. The patriotic star has been splashing some of her considerable fortune on bottled Welsh ... air. But if she wants to buy breeze, I've had a few celeb air ideas of my own ..."

Jane Moore, AGE 43

WHERE SHE CAME FROM Schooled in Oxford, Worcester, and on Cardiff's journalism course. Trained in Birmingham on the Post and Evening Mail and "earned her bloody spurs" on the tabloids. Recruited to edit The Sun's Bizarre at 23.

OBSESSIONS Pointless celebrities, hypocrisy.

SHE SAYS "Abi Titmuss was apparently 'shocked' when a crowd of rowdy blokes demanded to see her breasts during a nightclub appearance. Why? Did she think she'd been booked to quote Shakespeare? If you choose to sell yourself like a piece of meat, then I'm afraid that's how you get treated. Abi was being paid to judge a best boxer shorts contest at some club called Zanzibar in Derbyshire. Ah, the glamorous world of showbiz. It doesn't come much headier than that."

Richard Littlejohn, AGE 51

WHERE HE CAME FROM Born in Essex. Got his break on the Birmingham Evening Mail as teenager. Spent almost 40 years in newspapers. Wrote his first column for the Evening Standard in the late 1980s, made his name on The Sun despite a stint at The Mail 10 years ago, where he is returning for a reported £1m.

OBSESSIONS Anything "politically correct". New Labour.

HE SAYS "It pains me to say this, but The Sun's campaign to put the Great back into Britain is doomed to failure. The cesspit lapping around our ears is the result of years of deliberate public policy. This country's proud achievements, from fighting tyranny and spreading democracy around the globe to ending the slave trade, have been denied and distorted. We are all going to hell in a handcart."

Johann Hari, AGE 26

WHERE HE CAME FROM JoinedNew Statesman fresh out of Cambridge and moved to The Independent in 2003. Contributing editor to gay magazine Attitude and columnist for the Evening Standard.

OBSESSIONS Asylum seekers, drug legalisation, redistribution of wealth, democracy, prison reform, human rights.

HE SAYS "Kill me now. I can't face another three months of haggling between Tony Blair and Michael Howard over who will be tougher on immigrants and disability benefits. Another 13 weeks of flying pigs, Fagin-flaunting and 'Forward, Not Back'? ... It's hard to imagine a more bogus start to the election campaign than the immigrant-whipping of the past week."

Deborah Orr, AGE 43

WHERE SHE CAME FROM Started typesetting recruitment ads, moved to New Statesman, thenThe Guardian, editing weekend edition for five years. Joined The Independent in 1999.

OBSESSIONS Unashamed socialist and Marxist. Education, social policy and identity politics.

SHE SAYS "For a little while Bush and Blair got to live in their fantasy world, where those young radical Westerners who seek to show that their pious fiddling at the margins of catastrophe is wrong are painted-up, quite erroneously, as the enemy. Now they're back in the real world, the one we all help to make. And the awful truth is that there are enemies all over the place, not all of them as crudely murderous as terrorists, but many of them perilously dangerous all the same."

Steve Richards, AGE 44

WHERE HE CAME FROM Graduated from London College of Printing. Became political correspondent at the BBC. Was political editor at the New Statesman and chief political commentator at Independent on Sunday. Presents GMTV's Sunday Programme and Radio 4's A Week In Westminster and Parliamentary Questions.

OBSESSIONS The Blair-Brown and Britain-EU relationships, the travails of the Tory party, the media and politics.

HE SAYS "The Major government imploded because it was divided and exhausted, but the media did more than report the crisis. We added to the sense of drama. To some extent the frenzied reporting of the genuinely dramatic Major years has become addictive. Most of the time politics is an arduously long drawn-out business, complex and multi-layered."

David Aaronovitch, AGE 51

WHERE HE CAME FROM Educated at Oxford and Manchester. Succeeded Charles Clarke as president of the National Union of Students. In 1983 began as a researcher on Weekend World and in 1995 started at The Independent.

OBSESSIONS Generally in favour of New Labour policy. Supported invasion of Iraq.

HE SAYS "The actions of depraved members of a disapproving society - deeply shamed by people such as the Abu Ghraib abusers and their weird sadism - don't have the same implications as similar actions carried out as a matter of policy by elite members of a depraved society. What had happened at Abu Ghraib in Saddam's day - real electrodes, not dummy ones - was specifically ordered. The regime existed because of such terrors, not despite them. It's important ... that we don't confuse ourselves with false equivalence."

Mary Ann Sieghart, AGE 44

WHERE SHE CAME FROM Educated at Oxford. Began at The Daily Telegraph in 1980 while at university. Assistant editor on The Times since 1988.

OBSESSIONS A New Labour groupie in the early days, but that honeymoon has been over some time. Has attended Glastonbury for 23 years.

SHE SAYS "The suspense is over. Tim Henman and Andrew Murray are out of Wimbledon, and yes, it did rain at Glastonbury. Actually, "rain" is too genteel a word for the torrential downpour we experienced on Friday morning. We were woken at 5.30am by a thunderbolt that could have come straight from the finger of Thor."

Anatole Kaletsky, AGE 53

WHERE HE CAME FROM Born in Moscow in 1952. Lived in Poland and Australia. Moved to the UK in 1996. Educated at Cambridge and Harvard. Joined The Economist in 1976 and the Financial Times in 1979. Moved to The Times in 1990. Left in 1996 to set up consultancy firm.

OBSESSIONS New Labour supporter, Eurosceptic, opposes the euro.

HE SAYS "The first lesson of White Wednesday (as I have always perversely called this day of national salvation) was that a country that gives up its currency loses control of its economic destiny. The second lesson was that interest rates, used boldly, are a uniquely powerful tool for stimulating job creation and growth. These lessons are hugely relevant to Europe today. The euro is the essential cause of Europe's "democratic deficit" because it prevents different countries adopting the variety of social and business models that voters demand."

Tony Parsons, AGE 51

WHERE HE CAME FROM Answered ad inNME in 1976 looking for "hip young gunslingers" to write about punk. Later wrote for The Daily Telegraph and appeared on The Late Review on BBC2. Writes novels.

OBSESSIONS Capital punishment, large-breasted women. HE SAYS "My team of researchers have studied the photographs and have returned with the conclusion that the Kaplinsky swimwear adequately covers both breasts and buttocks. And this in an age when many bikinis hardly cover the crack in their owner's bum. In comparison, Natasha's swimming costume was almost prim. In fact, the last time I saw pants as big as that was in one of the Bridget Jones movies. And they were being worn by Colin Firth."

Sue Carroll, AGE Not available

WHERE SHE CAME FROM Formerly at The Sun. At The Mirror for more than 10 years.

OBSESSIONS Love rats: currently Jude Law, James Hewitt

SHE SAYS "Finally it seems Sienna Miller has wreaked revenge on her two-timing fiancé Jude Law. She bedded his friend, Daniel Craig, behind his back and, to make matters worse, this is the actor who has been anointed as the new James Bond. Now a dejected Law has gone off to lick his wounds in Spain, requesting to be alone. Like a silly old drama queen, he's bleating that his relationship with Sienna is "destructive". And who, pray, destroyed it?"

Paul Routledge, AGE 61

WHERE HE CAME FROM Born and grew up in Yorkshire. Labour editor on The Times in 1980s. Became a lobby correspondent forThe Observer then the Independent on Sunday.Mirror's chief political correspondent in 2002. Has written several political biographies.

OBSESSIONS The awfulness of New Labour. Eurosceptic.

HE SAYS "There is, increasingly, an air of unreality about Blair's premiership. Bernard Ingham, Thatcher's spin doctor, would describe him as "semi-detached". At his monthly press conference, the Prime Minister seemed blithely unaware that his Home Secretary is already back-tracking on his latest round of terror legislation, insisting that he is "flexible" on proposals to intern suspects for up to three months. Blair simply blundered on as if Charles Clarke hadn't said anything, insisting that if the cops want 90-day detention, they must have it."