In a country riven by the seemingly never-ending Brexit debacle, it was perhaps inevitable a hero would eventually appear, not in a cape but a slightly dour suit and tie combo.
Enter Mark Francois.
A Tory MP for the last 18 years, Francois seems to have suddenly found his purpose, making headlines with a passionate and slightly bizarre letter that appears to have endeared him to those that just want Brexit to happen.
So who is he? Well, here’s a brief and in no way definitive guide.
He’s incredibly short
And don’t just take it from us, it says literally that on his Wikipedia page right now so there must be some truth in it. Possibly.
He did nothing particularly interesting until last month
Francois became the MP for Rayleigh in 2001, served as Minister of State in various departments and kept almost completely out of the headlines until an incredible encounter with Will Self on live TV last month.
Although, in 2009 he did make a notable appearance in The Telegraph during the expenses scandal:
His claims included Mars bars, Snickers, Kit Kats, wine gums, Twiglets, Jaffa Cakes, chocolate biscuits, Pringles crisps and “bags of sweets”... Häagen-Dazs ice cream, lemon sorbet, choc ices, crisps, Starburst, Bourneville dark chocolate and Trebor mints. Among his purchases were several Peperami “hot” 5 packs.
Wasn’t he in the Army?
Yes. According to his website he “served as an infantry officer in the Territorial Army, including with the local Royal Anglian Regiment” during the “Cold War”.
And what did he learn from this experience? Last month he told us just that after one of the many Commons votes on Brexit.
He said: “Because it is not a win, it’s a lose. I am not going to bank a lose. I was in the army, I wasn’t trained to lose.”
That incredible encounter with Will Self on live TV
Oh my, how incredible it was.
Both men appeared to nearly come to blows during a segment on Brexit.
Appearing on BBC 2′s Politics Live, writer and critic Will Self claimed that you don’t “have to be a racist or an anti-Semite to vote for Brexit, it’s just that every racist or anti-Semite in the country did”.
Francois responded with outrage, saying the comment was a “slur on 17.4 million people”.
The conversation quickly escalated, with Francois becoming evermore incensed and Self seeming to enjoy every second of it, ending with a staring contest in which no one came out looking like a winner.
And here it is in all its glory.
His new-found fame continued thanks to a rant about pizza
Well, pizza and a few other things.
Francois this week penned a three-page epic demanding a symbolic poll on the future of the PM’s leadership.
Now if you consider the details of this carefully, you may become aware of the more-than-slight irony of an arch-Brexiteer demanding a second vote on something because they didn’t like the result of the first one.
He even said it on TV as well.
What’s pizza got to do with it?
We’re just getting to that – the fury of his letter was directed at the chairman of the powerful Conservative 1922 committee, Sir Graham Brady, saying he believes “enough is enough”.
It now “falls to the ‘poor bloody infantry’ of the Conservative backbenchers” to topple the prime minister, he wrote.
He also hit out at Brexit-backing cabinet ministers, who meet as part of the so-called “pizza club”, for doing what Francois claimed was “absolutely nothing (save consume vast quantities of pizza)”.
So there you go.
On the subject of literary epics...
Francois’ latest foray into the finer side of the English language saw him just today “shouting Tennyson poems to an audience exclusively of pensioners, all of whom have robbed young people of their futures”.
Not our words, those of this gent, Tom Peck of the Independent.
And he didn’t stop there, today referring to himself and opponents of the PM’s Brexit deal as the “Spartan phalanx”
Mark, we have a few questions about that...
In a series of speeches at a meeting of the anti-Europe Bruges Group in Westminster on Monday, Francois, the vice-chairman of the European Research Group (ERG) of pro-Brexit MPs, said people in the UK could not be “held captive against their will”.
And his rhetoric seems to have been contagious. Anger boiled over, with audience members shouting “f*** government” and repeatedly yelling “traitor!” at the mention of Theresa May.
Francois then made a classical reference to treacherous diplomacy, to laughter in the room.
He said: “If you now try to hold us in against our will you will be facing perfidious Albion on speed.
“It would therefore be much better for all our sakes if we were to pursue our separate destinies in a spirit of mutual respect… Let my people go.”
We’ll bring you the latest Francois linguistic flourishes as they happen.