Britishness is the state or quality of being British, or of embodying British characteristics, and is used to refer to that which binds and distinguishes the British people and forms the basis of their unity and identity, or else to explain expressions of British culture—such as habits, behaviours or symbols—that have a common, familiar or iconic quality readily identifiable with the United Kingdom. Dialogue about the legitimacy and authenticity of Britishness is intrinsically tied with power relations and politics; in terms of nationhood and belonging, expressing or recognising one's Britishness provokes a range of responses and attitudes, such as advocacy, indifference or rejection. Macphee and Poddar state that although the designation of the two differing terms, Britishness and Englishness, is not simple as they are invariably conflated, they are both tied into the identity of the British nation and empire, since these last two are altering considerably as Englishness and Britishness do too. Thus the slippage between the two words can be seen as a play between these changing dynamics.

Andy Parsons (born 1967) is an English comedian and writer, who regularly appears on Mock the Week. With comedy partner Henry Naylor, he has written and presented nine seasons of Parsons and Naylor’s Pull-Out Sections for BBC Radio 2.

Parsons was born in Dorset. He attended Parc Eglos Primary School and Helston Comprehensive School (Cornwall), and Churston Ferrers Grammar School, Torbay (Devon) before going to Christ's College, Cambridge to study Law, where he met and former a double act with Henry Naylor which twice toured with the National Student Theatre Company and once with the Footlights. After completing his studies, Parsons got a job working as a legal clerk on a case at the Greenock shipyards, which he describes as "the most tedious thing I'd ever done." With Naylor he established TBA, London's first sketch comedy club.

His first TV writing job was for Spitting Image and he went on to become one of the main writers. He has also appeared as a guest on They Think It's All Over, QI, and BBC Radio 5 Live's Fighting Talk. He has missed only five episodes of Mock the Week and became a regular panellist at the beginning of Series 3. He, like the other regular panellists on Mock the Week, keeps the same seat throughout the series, Parsons being the one to the left of the host Dara Ó Briain.

Roderick E. L. Liddle (born April 1960) is an English print, radio, and television journalist.

He is an associate editor of The Spectator, and former editor of BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he is the author of Too Beautiful for You (2003), Love Will Destroy Everything (2007), and co-author of The Best of Liddle Britain (2007). He has presented several television programmes, including The New Fundamentalists, The Trouble with Atheism, and Immigration Is A Time Bomb.

Liddle began his career at the South Wales Echo, then worked for the Labour Party, and later joined the BBC. He become editor of Today in 1998, resigning in 2002 after his employers objected to one of his articles in The Guardian. He has also written for The Sunday Times and The Sun among other publications.

His comments regularly cause controversy in the media, and his acrimonious divorce in 2004 from Rachel Royce received much attention. He was accused of racism for making remarks about the African-Caribbean community and for the content of his posts to an online forum. A November 2011 article by Liddle in The Spectator about the trial of two individuals involved in the murder of Stephen Lawrence led to a decision to prosecute the magazine for breaching reporting restrictions. A court hearing will be held in June 2012.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown MBE (returned) (born Yasmin Damji on 10 December 1949) is a Ugandan-born British journalist and author, who describes herself as a "leftie liberal, anti-racist, feminist, Muslim, part-Pakistani...a very responsible person". Currently a regular columnist for The Independent and the Evening Standard, she is a well-known commentator on issues of immigration, diversity and multiculturalism. She is a founder member of British Muslims for Secular Democracy.

Alibhai-Brown's mother was born in East Africa and her father moved there from British India in the 1920s. Born into the Ugandan Asian community in Kampala in 1949, she belongs to the Nizari branch of the Ismaili faith. After graduating in English literature from Makerere University in 1972, she left Uganda for Britain, along with her niece, Farah Damji, shortly before the expulsion of Ugandan Asians by Idi Amin and completed a Master of Philosophy degree in literature at Linacre College, Oxford in 1975. After working as a teacher, particularly with immigrants and refugees, she moved into journalism in her mid-thirties. She is married to Colin Brown, Chairman of the Consumer Services Panel of the Financial Services Authority; the couple have a daughter and Alibhai-Brown has a son from a previous marriage

Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch (born 19 July 1976) is an English film, television, radio and theatre actor. His most acclaimed roles include Stephen Hawking in the BBC drama Hawking (2004); William Pitt in the historical film Amazing Grace (2006); the protagonist Stephen Ezard in the miniseries thriller The Last Enemy (2008); Paul Marshall in Atonement (2007); Bernard in Small Island (2009); Sherlock Holmes in the modern BBC adaptation series Sherlock (2010); and Peter Guillam in the spy thriller Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011).

In February 2011, he began playing both Victor Frankenstein and his creature opposite Jonny Lee Miller in Danny Boyle's stage adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The play had a three-month run at the National Theatre. In late 2011, he played Major Stewart in Steven Spielberg's War Horse (2011). The film received five BAFTA nominations and six Academy Award nominations, including the Best Picture nomination in 2012. He also played Peter Guillam, one of the pivotal roles in Tomas Alfredson's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011), which was nominated for three Academy Awards and 11 BAFTA Awards. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was also nominated for Best Picture in 2012.