"I have a poor soul, an incomplete body, and the little bit of dignity that you have given me - I will sacrifice it all for the Revolution and for Islam," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in 2009.

In Iran, the word of Ali Khamenei is absolute. For more than two decades he has been his country's supreme leader.

But the outside world knows perhaps only two things about him: he has almost the same name as the man he replaced, Ayatollah Khomeini, and he is overshadowed by the man he outranks - President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

When we do see Ali Khamenei he is often delivering a sermon against the US - looking rather forbidding in a black turban and white beard.

But it turns out that this same man also smoked a pipe, likes gardening and enjoys poetry. It is time to get to know the ayatollah