ASKED to described Billy Wright, one long serving Ulster Volunteer Force member said he could only compare him to a Shankill Road UVF member who had earned a reputation for fearsomeness in the 1970s and who had been subsequently assassinated in the late 1980s after being released from prison.
The other UVF figure had attracted huge amounts of media attention and had revelled in the reputation and mystique it afforded him. To his other associates in the UVF, however, he was a "shitbag . . . we hated him."
Like his predecessor, Wright is an amalgam of fundamentalist Protestant with a touch of popular culture.
Wright has fitted in with the rave dance scene culture, which is as much a part of working class loyalist life as the Orange marching bands.
He first achieved media attention in July, 1986 during the first of the "sieges" at Portadown in the aftermath of the Anglo Irish Agreement.
He was introduced to journalists by the firebrand loyalist politician, George Seawright, who seemed to see in 26 year old Wright the makings of a new loyalist paramilitary leader and told some journalists so.
The blocking of the Orange demonstration route through the Tunnel in Portadown that year threw up the Ulster Clubs movement which attracted many minor unionist political figures including some who are now prominent in the Ulster Unionist Party.
However, the Ulster Clubs had no organic links to any another political or paramilitary groups and eventually faded away.
Wright disappeared from view during the late 1980s. There was talk of disputes within the local loyalist community about the use of drugs at dances in the mid Ulster area.
He then re emerged, separated from his first wife with the message that he had found the Lord and was dedicating his life to the cause of the Protestant people of Ulster.
There is a general scepticism about such Damascene conversions among loyalists and there is no exception in Wright's case.
However, the scepticism among other loyalists about Wright has not dented his media standing and he is regularly referred to as the "most feared" loyalist in Northern Ireland.
He is now credited with organising and leading the Orange "siege" at Drumcree in July, a claim which has no basis. He gave several interviews to journalists and appeared regularly at Drumcree but the event was managed entirely by local Orangemen.
The key to the intensity of Wright's anti nationalism lies in his early years when he grew up amid an extended Protestant community in south Armagh which suffered at the hands of the IRA.
His uncle, a member of the Salvation Army, his father in law and brother in law were all killed by the IRA. Near where he lived the IRA shot dead 10 Protestant workmen in 1976 in what became known as the Whitecross massacre.
Wright's own family are pillars of respectability. One of his sisters is a Protestant missionary in Africa.
Wright's persona is as much a product of the four years of bitter sectarian conflict that preceded the paramilitary ceasefires in the autumn of 1994.
He allowed himself to be interviewed by carefully selected journalists. He eventually became a tabloid obsession. At about the same time that Wright re appeared, the mid Ulster area of north Armagh, east Tyrone, west Down and south Derry was being plunged into the sectarian conflict.
The area, known in the 1970s as the "murder triangle" has thrown up some of the worst atrocities of the conflict in the North. It has also thrown up Billy Wright.
During the past five years there have been six IRA attempts on Wright's life. He has been questioned about most of the sectarian murders admitted by the UVF in mid Ulster.
It would seem that he is not likely to be easily silenced by a threat of assassination from his former colleagues.
If Catholics are afraid of me, then I understand their feelings. Likewise Protestants are frightened of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness," he said in an interview with the Press Association this week which contained his usual mixed message of the olive branch and iron fist.
"I know nationalists are vehemently opposed to people like Billy Wright, but they see in me what perhaps the Protestant population see in members of Sinn Fein.
"The last two years of this process [peace] has been very frustrating for me. I feel the unionist people have been badly treated and I don't believe attempts at a settlement have been along the democratic lines. My feelings are exactly the same as the vast majority of unionists.
"I recognise there are great difficulties in Northern Ireland but the treatment of the unionist people is not justifiable.
"I can understand why organisations like the UVF defended their people in the absence of proper security. However, people seem to forget that Billy Wright was the first leading loyalist to demand a loyalist ceasefire.
"I am not opposed to peace. I want to see real peace. But I've known from a couple of months into this process the republican movement was not seriously interested in settlement. It's a strategy to overthrow the democratic wishes of the unionist people.
"Just because I'm vocal on that, people perceive that I'm against peace. I'm not. I want to see real dialogue. I want to see another permanent IRA ceasefire. I would like to see it today and for them to meet the requirements for honest, decent talks.
"If that makes me an extremist, then I just don't know..."