A week before the Miss World contest, Alan Whicker talks to the contestants, asking about their their personal lives and ambitions, and their reasons for entering the contest.

Hatti was the world's first black republic, ruled from 1957 to 1971 by 'President For Life' Dr Francis Duvalier - Papa Doc. Whicker meets Papa Doc in his Presidential Palace at Port au Prince in the company of his Tontons Macoutes - murderous civilian thugs. This show won the Dumont International Journalism Award at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1971.

Alan Whicker comes face-to-face with the last of South America's old style dictators - Don Alfredo Stroessner who has been absolute ruler of Paraguay for 19 years. One Paraguayan in ten is sold to be a paid informer and the Minister of Information has admitted there are so many informers that they run out of information and have to make it up.

Harold Robbins, 56 and five times married, is the orphan who became the world's best paid writer. In New York he takes Alan Whicker round the Devil's Kitchen district of his youth. This won the Best Interview Programme Award at 1973's Hollywood Festival of World Television.

In California they change faces as casually as we change clothes and cosmetic surgery is no longer only for the rich and famous. Whicker meets plastic surgeon Kurt Wagner and his wife Kathy, a walking example of his surgery skills.

Whicker arrives in Penang for the island's spectacular Thalpusam festival, where entranced pilgrims pierce themselves with giant spikes. He also meets a Scottish doctor still living in the style of the British Raj.

Butch Cassidy's sister Lula is alive and well and living in Utah, aged 94 and with a fund of fascinating stories. In Salt Lake City Whicker drives the hydrogen car, learns from Dinosaur Jim why these monsters face a new extinction, and sees the world's biggest man-made hole

Part 1 - Whicker undertakes a risky assignment, hurtling around San Francisco in the back of a police car. The cops are women, fully armed and determined to prove they are worthy of the blue uniform. Please Note, this episode contains some strong language.

Part 2 - San Francisco's 150,000 homosexuals are the city's largest unofficial minority. The Police Department has become the first in the US to knowingly recruit gay officers. Whicker gives an exclusive view of the first gay officers training and going on patrol.