Ian Paisley

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Let me smell yurr breath!
—Ian Paisley[1]
He apparently subsisted entirely on lemons

The Rev. Dr. Ian Paisley, Baron Bannside, was for many years the face of Protestant bigotry in Northern Ireland, and one of the IRA's best recruiters. His father wore a sash. Bizarrely, in the 21st century something (perhaps a British threat to leave Northern Ireland to the mercy of the Catholics[2]) hit him on the head and he became conciliatory and moderate. Never can tell, eh?

His doctorate was the honorary variety, received from that eminent institute of higher learning, Bob Jones University.[3]

In the 1950s, Paisley was involved in a dispute with a local presbytery in the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, which had barred him from speaking in a church hall. Supporters of Paisley initiated a schism, creating a fundamentalist denomination (one of the few actually to describe itself as such) called the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster. Paisley was elected as the new denomination's Moderator of the General Assembly in 1951 and remained in that office for the next 57 years.

In the 1970s, he launched a campaign against legalising male homosexuality named "Save Ulster from Sodomy" and has been an outspoken opponent of gay rights and equality since.[4][5]

In 1988, Paisley caused quite a stir when he heckled Pope John Paul II in the European Parliament, describing him as being the Antichrist.[6] He was evicted from the chamber for this.[7]

He was regularly elected to Parliament, which didn't want him, and to the European Parliament, where he ended up sitting next to the fascists because none of the sensible parties wanted to be associated with him. He was surprisingly popular in his local constituency among Catholics, due to his hard work for individual constituents.

In 2007, breaking with his old routine of saying "No" to everything, he became First Minister of Northern Ireland in a power-sharing government with Sinn Fein. This appalling act of heresy led him to be forced out of his longtime leadership position in the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster and, later, forced to retire from his pastor's post.[8]

He decided to retire in 2011,[9] and died in 2014.[10]

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