`If you are a dog and your master suggests you wear a sweater . . . suggest that he wear a tail." That tip from Fran Lebowitz's book Pointers for Pets is all very well, but if your master happens to be the new pin-up for loyalist paramilitaries, Johnny Adair, such an outright act of rebellion could be considered very unwise.

Anyway, Adair's Alsatian, Rebel, didn't seem to mind donning an Ulster Freedom Fighter (UFF) T-shirt for the short walk with his master and almost 100 similarly dressed hoods down the hill at Drumcree to the security barrier last week.

One short stroll, and the presence of the international media assured the name Johnny "Mad Dog" Adair was known all over the world.

His appearance at Drumcree caused concern among the security forces. When he was filmed later cheering at the Protestant Corcrain estate in Portadown after a volley of shots had been fired into the air by masked paramilitaries, fears were heightened that he would become more involved in the widespread violent protests seen across Northern Ireland in recent weeks. People are afraid of Johnny Adair, the shaven-headed self-professed community worker conceded during a television interview this week. He tends to speak about himself in the third person a lot. A sure sign he is now a bonafide celebrity is the fact Martin Bashir, the man who did that interview with Princess Diana, was the one chosen to grill the former commander of the UFF.

Asked whether Sir Ronnie Flanagan's description of people with malevolent intent who were waiting in the wings was in reference to him, he said: "Absolutely not".

"Republicans and nationalists say Johnny Adair has other ulterior motives, which is wrong. . . I am a peaceful man. That was nothing absolutely to do with me whatsoever. . . The crowd that I was with applauded them ones, and I was part of that crowd so I applauded them also," he said about the incident at Corcrain.

"I don't understand why everyone's making such a big issue of it because it is Johnny Adair," he said. "I think people should be worried if I was the one firing the guns."

He may not be firing the guns, but there is no doubt who is calling the shots in Adair's Belfast power base of the Protestant Shankill area. And increasingly this influence has been extended to the LVF-dominated Portadown; the former leader of that organisation, Billy "King Rat" Wright, who was murdered in the Maze in 1997, is something of a hero of Adair's.

Those who knew both say he lacks Wright's charisma and intellect but almost makes up for it in cunning.

His rise through the UFF/UDA was swift. A glue-sniffing petty criminal in his teens, he found direction through paramilitary activity. By his 20s he was big news in the UFF; 22 Catholics are thought to have been killed following his orders in a period of 1 1/2 years in the early 1990s. The most notorious of these was a gun attack on Sean Graham's betting shop in Belfast where in 1992 five Catholics lost their lives.

Ultimately it was his ego and unWright-like carelessness that was to land him in prison. The RUC built up a strong case against him when he was recorded bragging to them about his involvement in paramilitary activity. He was the first person charged with directive terrorism in Northern Ireland and was sentenced to 16 years in prison in 1995.

He was released last year on licence under the Belfast Agreement after serving four years. A target for rival paramilitaries, Adair has been known to wear a bullet-proof vest under his designer sports gear since his release. Last year he was shot in the head while attending a UB40 concert in Belfast.

It's difficult to find anyone who will talk openly about Johnny Adair. "I don't want to get shot," is a typical response. This was how Kate Kray, widow of London gangster Ronnie, assessed him when she interviewed him for her book Hard Bastards. "Johnny spoke with great intellect. There was no malice or bitterness in his voice. It was the cool, controlled way in which he spoke that made him so utterly terrifying. He was normal, just like you and me."

SINCE his early release from prison this normal man has garnered the kind of cult hero status among young loyalists that Billy Wright only achieved after his death.

Wright was James Dean, lived fast, died young and left a goodlooking corpse. Adair, in the eyes of those who idolise him in kick-the-Pope bands across the North, is their version of Tina Turner, a living legend. And he borrowed from Turner for his specially made UFF T-shirts. "Simply The Best" reads the slogan emblazoned on them.

Johnny James Adair is 36 and lives in a house in the Lower Shankill with his wife, Gina, whom he married while in prison, and their three children. He is a joker, those who have observed him say, who doesn't miss an opportunity to show off his blacker-than-black humour.

In Belfast recently, he asked a group of reporters and cameramen whether they would like to be introduced to "the Mad Pup". He duly presented his two-year-old son to the press, cuddling the little boy who wore a baseball cap back to front and an earring.

Sporting a deep tan from a recent holiday in Jamaica, he regularly takes his family to their caravan in Millisle, a loyalist haven on the coast of Co Down that is also known as Shankill by the Sea.

His designer clothes and expensive holidays suggest wealth that could not be accrued by an ordinary community worker. It is widely rumoured his cash comes from drug-dealing, but Adair denies this. His physique, he says, is due to a weightlifting regime he began in prison, although others suggest it has been enhanced by steroids.

Like some of us, Adair doesn't know much about art but he knows what he likes. His artistic endeavours extend to painting the kerb-stones in his locality red, white and blue. He was filmed doing so bare-chested in the leadup the Twelfth, when collectors of Adair trivia noted he had his nipples pierced.

Once jailed for directing terrorism, he now directs the mural painters in the Shankill, which now resembles a kind of loyalist theme park. (A Disney fan, Adair has a Mickey Mouse tattoo). He has commissioned several of the new ones, including a depiction of a denim-clad Billy Wright, which have appeared in recent months.

Others are more sinister, glorifying the deaths of Catholics. In the past Adair has been credited with the catchy Troubles slogan "The only good Fenian is a dead one".

Others are just plain naff.

It would be interesting to know what Princes William and Harry would think of the commemoration on one gable wall which shows Princess Diana in an off-the-shoulder evening dress.