Since Jeffrey Howard Archer first bounced into the public eye at Oxford 38 years ago, courtesy of a typically chancy stunt involving the Beatles, he has displayed a bewildering number of public personas, repeatedly faced political and personal ruin and always bounced back.
He is by turns mendacious, egotistical, ambitious, pushy, resilient, tactless, gullible, funny, charming, reckless, hard working, generous, self-obsessed, loyal and naive.
"The best way to think about Jeffrey is to treat him as if he comes from another planet," said Sheridan Morley, one of his oldest friends, attempting to explain the contradictions.
"He will dive over a cliff and then be amazed that he's falling. He thinks he's Peter Pan, that he'll never die. Everything he does he thinks is going to be all right in the end."
Archer was born on April 15 1940 in the City of London maternity hospital, the third child of Lola Cook, a nurse, and William Archer, an irascible chancer almost 40 years her senior.
The first two children, including another Jeffrey, were illegitimate and given up for adoption, but Lola doted on Jeffrey. His father left, and she raised Jeffrey alone, funding his fees for a minor public school through journalism.
Archer's career, encompassing spells as politician, novelist, fundraiser, peer, policeman, playwright, actor, athlete, adulterer and liar, has been one of spectacular peaks and troughs.
In 1974 he stepped down as MP for Louth after being conned out of £450,000 in a share scandal. Twelve years later the Monica Coghlan affair forced him to resign as deputy chairman of the Conservative party.
In 1999 he abandoned his campaign to be mayor of London after Ted Francis told all to the News of the World. But while Archer's political progress has lurched from triumph to disaster his career as a novelist soared.
Facing bankruptcy in 1974 he told his wife: "The only way I can get out of this is to write my way out of it." To his credit he did just that. Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less became a bestseller, as did most of the 14 novels and collections of short stories that followed, although his rip-roaring tales are said to require teams of editors to make them readable.
Archer also stands accused of lying about his academic credentials, fiddling his expenses at the United Nations Association, fiddling other people's while a member of the GLC, stealing suits in Toronto and insider trading in the shares of Anglia TV, of which his wife was a director.
Through it all, however, he has kept going. Mr Morley, who has known him since Oxford, says: "The first time I heard of him was in 1963. All over Oxford there appeared these posters saying 'Jeffrey Archer presents the Beatles in concert'.
"We were all thinking 'who is this Archer character, and how did he get the Beatles to Brasenose?' Well he did, and they played and I went along. At the interval I went to the toilet, and there beside me was Ringo Starr.
He asked if I knew this Jeffrey Archer bloke. I said everyone in Oxford was trying to work out who he was. Ringo said: 'He strikes me as a nice enough fella, but he's the kind of bloke who would bottle your piss and sell it.' "
Court reports
Jeffrey Archer's perjury trial
Courtroom Drama
The best show in town by theatre critic Michael Billington
Audio reports
13.07.2001: Archer jury considers its verdict(2mins 51)
19.06.2001: Archer 'spurned mistress for political career' (3mins 17)