WILLIE McCREA might be running behind schedule as he makes his way through a Protestant housing estate in Cookstown, but he is not a man to turn down a request.
"Ach, Willie, give us a wee song," a woman says. She has been awaiting his arrival with a huge Union Jack for at least 30 minutes. The Rev Willie doesn't disappoint her.
"My soul was in sin, my heart was in shame.
"I didn't know Jesus, not even his name," he sings loud and clear as he stands among the pansies and primroses in her garden.
The DUP MP and gospel megastar is seeking reelection in MidUlster. He has held the seat for 14 years but recent boundary changes have made the constituency more nationalist. Sinn Fein, the largest local party, is running its ardcomhairle member, Mr Martin McGuinness. The SDLP's Mr Denis Haughey is also contesting the election. But it is Mr McCrea and Mr McGuinness that are causing strong emotions.
No one is neutral on these politicians. Their followers loathe each other. Both are religious men who pride themselves on remaining close to their political base. Both have lost friends and loved ones during the Troubles.
Mr McCrea (49) came to prominence as a young firebrand preacher when he was jailed for six months for riotous behaviour in 1971. He was back in jail again later that year for disrupting Mass at Canterbury Cathedral.
He relishes theatrical gesture. When he lost the chairmanship of Magherafelt District Council, he presented a child's coffin to the new nationalist chairman. Last year he shared a platform with the loyalist dissident, Billy Wright, who has since been jailed for threatening to kill a woman.
A farmer's son, Mr McCrea found the Lord at a gospel meeting when he was eight years old. His faith brought him into politics. Holding surgeries at the back of his church, he came across so many social problems that he decided to enter politics.
His church in Magherafelt was originally a zinc but with a congregation of 12; now it is a showpiece building which holds up to 1,000. He is the UK's most successful gospel singer and has received gold, silver and platinum discs. His three daughters have biblical names - Faith, Grace and Sharon - and his son, Ian, was called after Dr Paisley.
Just before the 1994 ceasefire, the IRA sprayed the family's home with bullets. "It was a miracle that no one was killed," he says.
Mr McCrea has known grief. In 1976 his two cousins Robert (16) and Rachel (21) McLemon, died in an IRA booby trap bomb. Mr McCrea says no motive was ever established.
"Rachel had just got engaged that day and her brother was driving her around the neighbourhood to show off her ring. She was a lovely girl, a beauty queen. I had to identify her. She was lying on a slab. Half her face was gone and her body was split down the middle as if somebody had taken a knife to it. There was a cloth on the floor with a few wee bones on top. That was Robert."
Another cousin, Derek Ferguson, was killed by the IRA six years ago. They claimed he was in the UVF. His family denied it. "He opened the door to the gunmen. They just said `bye, bye, Derek', laughed, and riddled him," Mr McCrea says. "His five year old son put his fingers in the bullet holes to try and stop the bleeding but it was too late."
The SAS has killed around 12 alleged IRA men in undercover operations in Mid Ulster. Every time Mr McCrea "rejoiced". He believes the Provisionals are "Satan's sons" and he has called for curfews, ID cards, the sealing of Border roads and the death penalty.
But his affable, down to earth approach with his own supporters inspires immense loyalty. "There is nothing I wouldn't do for Willie, says a canvasser. "He gives us his all."
Mr McCrea has time for people. He listens intently to a man whose wife has just been diagnosed with cancer. An election worker recalls that when his disabled daughter died, Willie was "right by my side".
Mr McCrea always wears a suit and tie because a minister must "look respectable". But he never forgets his roots. "What sickens me is people who do well and then stick their noses in the air. You should never lose sight of where you came from. As my father would say, `Remember the bowl you were baked in'."
He insists that he works for Catholic constituents just as readily as Protestants. "The Rev McCrea has helped more Fenians than enough because he is a gentleman," says Robert, a former British soldier, who enthusiastically shakes the MP's hand.
What does Robert think of Sinn Fein? "I hope Martin McGuinness comes round here because I've plenty of friends who will hold him down for a good beating."
Nobody in Bellagby wants to beat up Mr McGuinness. It is all handshaking and back slapping as he arrives in town at tea time. Men, still in their working clothes, stand at doorways waiting to greet him. Women holding babies invite him inside.
"There must be no youth club on tonight," jokes a canvasser, pointing to the unruly group of children following the Sinn Fein man through the streets, Pied Piper like. He borrows their burley and tosses their ball playfully in the air. "There's the punishment squad," quips a canvasser, referring to the burley's less innocuous use in nationalist areas.
Mr McGuinness's face stares defiantly from a poster placed strategically outside the RUC station. The village is staunchly republican. Tricolours flutter from lamp posts. Two hunger strikers, Francis Hughes and Tom McElwee, lived just down the road. "Bellaghy has done a lot during the struggle," says a local man.
Mr McGuinness (46) grew up in the Bogside in Derry. It was a heady place in the late 1960s. With other teenagers, he faced the RUC and Protestant gangs on the streets. They used stones and petrol bombs against CS gas and rubber bullets.
In later years, as a republican leader, he would live with the constant threat of assassination. But he says that he has never known fear like he did when a local youth, Desmond Beattie was killed by the British army in 1971.
"It was the first time I had seen anybody killed by a bullet. I was very scared. I couldn't understand it. There was blood everywhere."
He was jailed twice in the Republic for IRA membership. To the British and the unionists he is a ruthless terrorist godfather, but he is worshipped by republican grassroots. He has been instrumental in preventing an internal split and convincing militants that the peace process is not a leadership sellout.
Like Mr McCrea, Mr McGuinness remembers his dead - three Sinn Fein councillors were shot dead by loyalists. Supporting Sinn Fein is a means of obtaining revenge for some voters. For others it is just about strengthening the peace process by encouraging republicans on to the constitutional path.
Mr McGuinness lives in an ordinary house in the Bogside with his wife and four children. As Sinn Fein's chief negotiator he has a high media profile, but while canvassing in Bellaghy he is anxious to impress that he hasn't abandoned his roots.
"Don't call me Mister," he tells a group of women. "I'm the same as you are. I wear a suit and tie but I hate it."
Mr McGuinness maintains a distance from outsiders, but there are flashes of humour. When asked if he will be delivering a song like his DUP rival, he says that he was "taught not to sing at an early age" "singing" being republican slang for informing.
He writes poetry although "it would be an insult to Seamus Heaney to call myself a poet".
He claims to be a "brilliant" cook. "My speciality is braised meat balls a la Delia Smith. Although I sometimes overdose on the garlic and the girls complain that they can't kiss their boyfriends."