In the news: Ken Livingstone

Newt-loving Ken Livingstone has extended his affection to lowly paid academics and debt-ridden students. This week, the maverick mayor of London hosted a conference on further and higher education in the capital.

Mr Livingstone is reported to be concerned that the high cost of living in London is blighting lecturer recruitment.

He opposed the government's abolition of maintenance grants and the introduction of tuition fees in 1998. He supported students angered by the National Union of Students' ineffective opposition to tuition fees.

Mr Livingstone said that his election to Labour's National Executive Council in 1997 ahead of Peter Mandelson, who was the choice of the leadership, was due in part to this opposition.

After his election as mayor of London in May 2000, one of his first tasks was to attend the opening of the University of East London's Docklands campus.

Three months ago, he addressed a student rally and joined demonstrators in demanding the abolition of tuition fees, the reintroduction of targeted maintenance grants and the elimination of the possibility of top-up fees.

Most recently, he has hit the headlines in his bid to rid Trafalgar Square of pigeons - or "rats with wings", as he calls them.

He works alongside the chairman of the Greater London Authority, Trevor Phillips - a former president of the National Union of Students and running mate of the unsuccessful Labour candidate for mayor, Frank Dobson.

Yet the 55-year-old mayor is not university educated. He received a teaching certificate from the Philippa Fawcett College of Education after leaving London's Tulse Hill Comprehensive School. He never used the qualification, instead becoming a technician at the Chester Beatty Cancer Research Institute. He joined the Labour Party in 1969 but he was expelled for running against Frank Dobson.