Michael Stone in recent years has been possessed of a craving to grab the tabloid headlines. Not content with the notoriety gained by murdering three people in Milltown Cemetery 18 years ago, his vanity has compelled him to maintain his name in the red top press, whether meeting the late northern secretary Mo Mowlam in the Maze prison, ridiculing another infamous loyalist Johnny Adair, offering his opinion on the latest loyalist feud or on art, or reminding people of all the people he put in graves, and those he didn't.
His strange mind and ego appear to have driven him once again to dramatically seek attention. What he did yesterday didn't make sense in terms of his more recent pronouncements on the peace process. He has declared himself a supporter of the Belfast agreement, and was released from a 30-year-prison stretch under the agreement six years ago. He was opposed to violence; he wanted to show young loyalists the folly of paramilitarism.
So, why attempt to mount a one-man attack on Parliament Buildings, Stormont, just as he did at Milltown Cemetery in 1988 as the bodies of the three IRA members shot dead by the SAS in Gibraltar were being buried.
Expecting to make it all the way through Parliament Buildings and into the debating chamber where his 1988 targets Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness were seated, appeared over-ambitious even for the man whom admiring loyalists nicknamed Rambo Stone.
However, it must be said that but for the bravery of the male and female security guard who initially seized him yesterday, he might have caused more grief.
All told he has spoken of being involved in up to 20 killings . He said he was once only days away from killing the current lord mayor of London Ken Livingstone because of his support for Adams and McGuinness. Indeed, Stone said he was once only minutes away from assassinating Mr McGuinness in Derry .
With 51-year-old Stone you are never quite sure which is fact and which is fiction. He wears a bullet-proof jacket and believes he is under threat. Married twice, he has nine children. Living mostly in east Belfast he has made a living from his modern art. He will now have more time for that pursuit.
But his passion for media and public attention will be more difficult to satisfy. Because of his actions yesterday any future interviews with journalists seem certain to be conducted inside prison walls, although whether within a regular prison or some psychiatric detention centre is open to question.
- GERRY MORIARTY