George Reid is born, bred, educated and married in Ochil. He grew up in Tullibody and Alloa, and now lives in Bridge of Allan.

After Tullibody School and Dollar Academy, he graduated with first-class honours from the University of St Andrews and has a diploma in International Studies from Union College in the United States.

Starting work in newspapers, he moved to TV and radio where he quickly established a national and international reputation as a producer and presenter with both ITV and BBC.

In recent years he has been employed as Director of Public Affairs with the International Red Cross and consultant to UN agencies. He has served in eight wars and over 20 major disasters.

"I am very fortunate now to be back where I started," he says. "No matter where I have been in the world, home has always been where I could look out my window and see the Ochil Hills."

In a recent column in The Scotsman, George Reid said that he was "moving left while standing still".

"I have been a social democrat all my life, strongly committed to building a society which is both prosperous and socially just. I believe politics is about values. And that makes me considerably more radical than New Labour."

As an MP in the 1970s, Mr Reid was particularly active on social, constitutional and European issues. For four years he also served as a Member of the Assemblies of the Council or Europe and the Western European Union.

Party Leader Alex Salmond MP has identified George Reid as one of the forerunners of the modern SNP through his arguments that social democracy best suited to small countries within the wider framework of the European Union.

He was one of the first MPs to open a full-time constituency office. "The real satisfaction in the job is working closely with constituents."

Mr Reid says that he has two ambitions: to serve as MP for his home community, first at Westminster and then in Edinburgh; and to continue to press for independent Scottish membership of the EU.

In 1984, after making a BBC2 documentary on Refugees around the world, George Reid was invited to join the International Red Cross.

He served as a Director, working in Public Affairs in Geneva, and in the field in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Eastern Europe.

"In earthquakes, famines and conflict, George was never frightened to get his hands dirty," said his Red Cross Secretary-General Hans Høegh. "He dug for buried victims in the Armenian earthquake" (for which he was given the highest humanitarian award of the USSR, the Pirogov Gold Medal), "he served in refugee camps around the world, and he negotiated with the gunmen in South Africa."

For the past three years, Mr Reid has been working from Scotland and Switzerland with commercial companies, the UN, EU and humanitarian agencies on ways of ensuring that aid is more cost effective and gets to the victims.

"I have seen enough inhumanity to last me a lifetime," he comments. "I am appalled by the glut of arms and landmines around the world. I am determined that more aid should reach old folk and people with a disability. But basically I still believe that man to man the world ower shall brithers be..."