Name: Ron Davies
Age: 52
Lives: Draethen, South Wales
Occupation: MP, former Welsh secretary, former Welsh prime minister in waiting
Why in the news: resigned this week as Welsh secretary and Labour candidate for leader of the new Welsh assembly after a bizarre incident in a south London park
According to a spokesman for Tony Blair, the former Welsh secretary, Ron Davies, went where he did last Monday night because he was under pressure and needed some space. What better remedy for a wildlife-loving, 52-year-old minister than a late-night stroll in the south London park immortalised in a late 1970s pop song?
But down on a windy Clapham Common, Ron Davies's dreams of leading Wales into an independent future were sent, apologies to Squeeze, well and truly up the junction.
The British tabloids and broadsheets alike have revelled in the latest, and by far the most serious, Labour incident in Tony Blair's Cabinet.
His resignation letter to Blair is worth repeating here, in part as an example of how often what is not said can be far more interesting than what is:
"After driving back from Wales last night, I parked my car near to my home in south London. I went for a walk on Clapham Common. Whilst walking I was approached by a man I had never met before who engaged me in conversation.
"After talking for some minutes he asked me to accompany him and two of his friends to his flat for a meal. We drove, in my car, to collect his friends, one male, one female. Shortly afterwards the man produced a knife and together with his male companion robbed me and stole my car, leaving me standing at the roadside."
There were many questions. The main one was why Ron Davies, potentially the first prime minister of Wales, would go off with a stranger police say was about 50 with shoulder-length dreadlocks and a multicoloured coat.
The next day the tabloids gave their verdict. The more leafy parts of Clapham Common are a popular haunt of homosexuals and drug-peddlers. The incident, they alleged, constituted a night of Gay Sex Shame.
No holds were barred with the coverage, even providing a chance to ridicule the Welsh. Cue a picture in one of the tabloids of a sheep's head and the headline "Sleaze is Baaaaack".
Through his friends we heard that Davies has denied that the affair had a sex or, as was also mooted, a drugs link. Friends say he told them he had done "nothing improper or illegal".
Davies, his wife, Christina, and his daughter, Angharad, are said to be in hiding at a Welsh retreat.
A pugnacious political operator, Ron Davies has certainly seen better weeks. Just over 12 months ago he enjoyed the highest point of his career when Wales voted narrowly for devolution. He had spearheaded the campaign, and that could have spelt disaster for his future political life had he lost.
His life in politics began relatively early, when the son of a railway man was elected to Bedwas and Machen urban district council, one of the most militant in the country. By the age of 24 he was running the show. After a short spell teaching geography he became a councillor in the South Wales area of Rhymney Valley.
His tough, radical image emerged through the 1970s, when he opposed the idea of devolution and campaigned for unilateral nuclear disarmament, and entered Westminster as an MP for Caerphilly in 1983, the same year as Tony Blair.
He held the posts of agriculture spokesman and chief whip for a short time, but it was only in 1992 that he was appointed shadow Welsh secretary by the late Labour leader, John Smith. Despite the sophisticated ambitions of New Labour Blairites, who viewed him as something of a Neanderthal proponent of Old Labour, he was kept on in the cabinet after the Labour victory 18 months ago.
Since then he has come to public attention primarily for an outburst in which he said the Prince of Wales was not fit to be king for letting his children engage in bloodsports.
While there is said to be no love lost between him and Blair, Davies was admired for delivering the assembly and was nominated as Labour's candidate for leader of the Welsh assembly. And there is no doubt he would have won the May election for it.
The fallout of the Davies incident has seen Blair's spin doctor, Peter Mandelson, outed as a homosexual on Newsnight, and set the British soul searching on whether it matters if its politicians are gay.
In two somewhat bizarre editorials, the Sun stuck up for Mandelson and said the sexuality of politicians didn't matter. The era of gay-bashing was over, it proclaimed on the one hand, while lambasting Davies for what it dubbed a Gay Sex Riddle.
It highlighted once again the chasm that still exists between British and Irish media coverage of politicians' private lives and the ramifications if such stories do surface.
In March 1994, after two newspapers had printed reports about an incident involving Emmet Stagg TD, the Labour politician revealed that he had been sitting with a man he had just met in his car in Phoenix Park "in a part of the park known to me as a place where gay men meet". While Stagg admitted his conduct was indiscreet, it did not lead to his resignation or put an end to his political career.
Whatever the details of Davies's fateful encounter on Clapham Common, it amounts to a dreadful human tragedy for him, his wife and his teenage daughter. While a source said he plans to remain an MP, and maybe even contest one of the seats in the new assembly, his political career is likely to prove impossible to salvage.
He and his second wife, a former judo and squash player now training to be a barrister, are rarely seen together in public, and the couple refuse to allow "at home with the Davieses" type features in local papers. He was married before to a nurse. A source in Cardiff described him as "quite fiery" but at other times "quite warm" and a figure who "takes no prisoners".
His pastimes include birdwatching and taking long solitary walks in the countryside. He enjoys a drink, acquaintances say, his favourite tipple being a local Welsh beer called Brains, some of which he could have done with last Monday night on Clapham Common.