He's at absolute odds with the Labour government in the UK and he likes Ken Livingstone. He stays up too late at night and gets up too late in the morning. He was once in the British Army, which upset some people. He once supported Neil Kinnock and that upset even more people. He worked most of last year in America on a record that sold more copies there than in Britain, and that upset some people as well. It can only mean one thing - Billy Bragg is once more at large.
"I've always suffered a bit from the fact that a lot of people think I write only political songs," says Billy Bragg. "I did make political statements and I still try to in my own way. Robbie Williams rides around on stage in a motorised toilet. I try to put across socially political ideas. That's his thing. What I do is mine. It's part of the glorious tapestry of pop."
Billy Bragg leavens his earnestness with a good dollop of humour, yet he has garnered a degree of negativity from people who say he shouldn't make political pop music. His response is to say that he is not really a political songwriter.
"I'm an honest songwriter, and I try to be as honest as I can about relationships. That honesty doesn't stop in the bedroom for me - it comes out into the world. When I come out of there, I try to write as honestly as I can on the things I see around me. It's not to say that people who don't write about politics are dishonest, but leaving their perception of the world on just the one subject is ridiculous. People can be upset by honesty. They prefer things not to be said. But not saying things leaves the stage clear for people to bully one another emotionally or physically. Honesty presents a defence in some ways against that kind of blackmail."
Bragg is something of an elder statesman in the area of rough-hewn, honest folk music. As much a disciple of The Clash as Woody Guthrie, he views his position in the pantheon of pop with a sarcastic shrewdness normally reserved for The Late Show.
"If you could only see yourself," he says, "you could stop worrying you're Donovan and convince yourself you're Bob Dylan. I don't know whether people see me linked forever to some 1980s political agenda. Perhaps they do. All I can say is that I used to be on Top Of The Pops, but that my records now are as powerful and as relevant as anything I made back then."
Bragg says he has become somewhat less judgmental over the years, and places the blame on growing up gracefully. "It's difficult to know whether you've become enlightened, or whether you've got kids," he reflects. "If kids don't change your perspective, then you ain't doing it right.
People riding around on mobile toilets on stage? You need some reality to intrude on that, don't you?"
Billy Bragg and the Blokes play Cork Opera House tonight, and Vicar St, Dublin tomorrow