The voice may be slightly less booming and the frame more fra- gile but at 77, the Rev Ian Paisley is still in the thick of the fight. Suzanne Breen reports.
We're on the DUP battle-bus, heading to Bangor, Co Down, yesterday when a telephone call comes through. Ulster Unionist headquarters is inviting Dr Paisley to tea. "Drink tea with David Trimble?" he thunders. "Do they think we're circus clowns? This is an election campaign, not a pantomime.
"And you wouldn't know what they'd give me to drink to put me out of action for a few days," he jokes. Then, he has second thoughts - "tell Trimble I'll go if he invites wee Jeffrey". The battle-bus erupts in laughter.
It's claimed Dr Paisley is DUP leader in name only these days. His health and role in the campaign have been questioned. "They say I've cancer. They say I'm dying, but I'm taking a long time to die," he declares.
"I rise at 3 a.m. I have breakfast and read the Bible. I'm on the bus from morning until evening. I attend nightly campaign meetings. I love elections.
"I love meeting the people and they love me. They know I've never misled them. I'm truthful and blunt. You don't need a diction- ary to understand Ian Paisley."
The DUP manifesto is "our bible", he says. "We won't deviate from it. Any party member who negotiated with Sinn Féin after the election would be immediately expelled."
He claims many ordinary UUP voters are switching. Committed Trimbleites are dismissed as "the fur coat brigade".
The DUP and its supporters are a different breed, he claims. "We would cross the Red Sea for what we believe in and if it wasn't dry, we would swim it."
Dr Paisley describes the public response to the campaign as "overwhelming - I've never seen anything like it". He certainly is popular in Bangor market.
The moment he leaves the battle-bus, he is mobbed by dozens of shoppers. It seems spontaneous.
Trimble is "a traitor", says a woman with a bag of Brussels sprouts. "I used to vote for the other boy but I've had enough," says a man leaving the butcher. Smart in his pinstripe suit, Dr Pais- ley chats easily to two young men with baseball caps and tattoos.
Mothers introduce their daughters to him. Young women want their photograph taken with "the Big Man". A flower-seller offers him a bunch for his wife Eileen.
"Take these," he says, handing over yellow chrysanthemums - "they're the same colour as Trimble." It's a bright, crisp morning. "The weather has been marvellous. The Lord is looking after us," proclaims Dr Paisley. He believes it's not the only act of divine intervention.
"After the agreement, the DUP was written off. They said we were finished, but the wheel has turned. We will be the biggest unionist party after the election. It's a modern miracle."