John Simpson is the BBC's most senior news broadcaster. He joined the BBC in 1966 and has stayed there ever since. He has now reported from 140 countries and interviewed about 200 world leaders, including Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher, Colonel Gadaffi, Nelson Mandela, and Robert Mugabe. He reported on the fall of Kabul in 2001, the contested election in Iran in 2009, and the revolutions in Egypt and Libya in 2011.
In 1991 he was made a CBE for his reporting.