Andy Beckett meets the rightwing mischief-maker whose 'tittle tattle' is feared by cabinet ministers
For a decade starting in the early 90s, every July a young Irishman with a reckless side used to head for Pamplona. He and friends would take part in the Spanish city's famous Running of the Bulls. As he got older and stouter, the Irishman kept ahead of the bulls by running steadily less, of the course.
By 2002, when he was 35, "I used to wait in the town square about halfway along the track and run from there," he remembers. "That year, the cannon goes off for the start. I carry on chatting to a nervous boy from Essex. I tell him, 'Just wait until we see the bulls.' Suddenly he pelts. Next thing I know, I wake up in an ambulance."
The Irishman had been flung in the air by a bull and had extensive facial damage. The following July he gave Pamplona a miss. He had got married since his injury, and during 2003 and 2004 gradually found another, slightly safer outlet for his love of risks, showing-off and general naughtiness: anonymously goading British politicians.