Bilawal Bhutto Zardari (Urdu: بلاول بھٹو زرداری, Sindhi: بلاول ڀٽو زرداری)

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born 21 September 1988) is the chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party, and the eldest child of the late Pakistani politician and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and her husband Asif Ali Zardari, the current President of Pakistan. Chairman Bhutto Zardari is also the grandson of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the first popularly elected Prime Minister of Pakistan and father of Benazir Bhutto, who held the distinction of being the first female elected head of government of any Islamic country.As chairman of the Pakistan People's Party, the first-year Oxford University

Described by friends as studious and devoted to his mother, the teenager is a novice to public life.

He has yet to debate in the Oxford Union and would have to squeeze in the January elections before he returns to the UK for his second term at university.

Bilawal - the name means "one without equal" - was born in September 1988, three months before his mother Benazir was elected prime minister for the first time.

She went into self-imposed exile in April 1999, taking Bilawal and his two younger sisters with her, and divided their time between London and Dubai. For most of this time, his father Asif Ali Zardari was in jail in Pakistan on blackmail and corruption charges.

As a teenager, Bilawal said: "I have gone through lots of things and he wasn't there. At the time when we needed him, he was taken away. We were denied a normal life."

Bilawal won a place at Christ Church College in Oxford, also attended by his grandfather, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who founded the PPP. His mother was at Lady Margaret Hall and became president of the Oxford Union.

Victoria Schofield, a close friend of Miss Bhutto who has known Bilawal since he was a baby, said she was convinced he would rise to the challenge presented him.

"He was devoted to his mother, there is no doubt about that. He is not a flash spoilt brat by any means."

"He will be so emotionally connected to what his mother has suggested that there will be no question of him doing anything different."