Johnny Adair may indeed be the best-known hard man in Belfast, there is little disagreement on that. But the leading loyalist paramilitary is also a jumble of opposites. He is a curious mixture of uncompromising Ulster loyalist, egotist Shankill Road hero and a confusion of outside influences, ranging from his trademark reversed baseball cap to his Mickey Mouse tattoo, pierced nipples, shaved head and Tina Turner anthem Simply The Best. He revels in his "mad dog" nickname and once referred to his young son as 'mad pup'. He often refers to himself as Johnny Adair rather than 'I' and has a dog called rebel.
Impressively built but short in stature, he says his muscles are a result of working out while in jail, but others say he took steroids - a claim he denies. He is said to be linked with about 20 sectarian murders of Catholics in the early 1990s including the gun attack on Sean Graham's bookies on Belfast's Ormeau Road in which five were murdered. He was the first person to be convicted of the charge of directing terrorism - a crime many said was tailor-made to corner him. He was sentenced to 15 years in 1995.
No respecter of authority whether paramilitary or otherwise, he is said to have railed against the strictures of the UDA /UFF and its leadership. He is thought to follow his own rules and no-one else's. His influence runs as far as Billy "King Rat" Wright's Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF). Wright, murdered in the Maze prison on 1997, is thought to have been a hero and role model for Adair.
His private boasts about paramilitary involvement to the RUC were once secretly taped and he was promptly arrested. Freed under the terms of the Belfast Agreement, he was sensationally rearrested in spectacular fashion under orders of the then Northern Secretary, Mr Peter Mandelson, who suspended his out-on-licence status. He wore a bullet-proof vest while free. He was finally released from Maghaberry jail in May. His other attributes include directing mural painters in his Shankill heartland, ownership of a caravan on the north Co Down coast for family holidays, high living and Caribbean breaks.
His murals depict a heroic, denim-clad Billy Wright, Princess Diana and her sons while others glorify the deaths of Catholics. His prison cell was decorated with a poster which read "Kill 'em all. Let God sort 'em out". He insisted to The Irish Times in July 2000: "I am a peaceful man".
He faces both ways on the Belfast Agreement, publicly supporting it but privately opposing the deal. There were hints last month that he would consider standing for the Assembly next May following the demise of Gary McMichael's Ulster Democratic Party, which he disliked. The UDP failed to take any seats in the current Assembly and there is a conviction that, having supported the process leading up to the Belfast Agreement, this section of loyalism has got little out of the deal.