The Rev Ian Paisley has been one of the key forces in Northern Ireland politics over five decades, but in recent months he has come under increasing pressure from within his party to step down.
Paisley addresses political rally in 1974
As he approaches his 82nd birthday, he has been aware of growing disquiet within the senior ranks of his Democratic Unionist Party at his close relationship with Sinn Fein Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness.
The tag "The Chuckle Brothers" may have amused some, but within the ranks of the DUP there was a more sombre reaction.
The announcement his time as First Minister - what his wife Eileen is said to have called "his destiny" - will end after one year, came as no great surprise.
After his son, Ian Junior, was forced to resign as a junior Stormont Minister last month after being at his father's side since the moment he took office, he looked a little isolated.
His short period at the helm in Northern Ireland was a transformation from probably the most fiery, uncompromising and bellicose of Northern Ireland's politicians.
"No" and "Never" were the words associated with Ian Paisley as one political initiative or another floundered to his opposition.
No one would have disagreed with him when, on May 8th, 2007, he stood beside Tony Blair at Stormont to become First Minister with Martin McGuinness as Deputy and declared "If anybody had told me a few years ago that I would be doing this I would have been unbelieving."
But devolution bedded down in a way that had not been possible for Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble when he became first First Minister following the 1998 Belfast Agreement and ended up folding the Assembly.
The huge difference was that Ian Paisley did not have an Ian Paisley snapping at his heels yelling "No".
Mr Paisley opposed the Agreement, but went with the St Andrews Agreement which in 2007 provided a few minor tweaks to the 1998 original and led to the return of devolution.
The founder of the Democratic Unionist Party and the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, Ian Paisley was born in Armagh on April 6th, 1926, and brought up in Ballymena, Co Antrim, the son of a Baptist minister.
He was ordained in 1946 and was, until replaced in January, Moderator of the church he established in 1951. The pulpit of his church on the Ravenhill Road in Belfast was where he honed his trademark thundering oratory style.
From the early 1960s, Mr Paisley has been little short of a colossus in Northern Ireland political affairs. One of his first actions was to protest about the lowering of the Union Flag at Belfast City Hall as a mark of respect over the death of the Pope.
His political and religious activities were inseparable. He forged links with the Christian fundamentalists across the world, particularly in the US Bible Belt.
His critics accused him of having stood in the way of every political initiative in Northern Ireland since the 1960s. He opposed the Sunningdale Agreement in 1973 and - with the help of the Ulster Workers Strike - brought down the power-sharing administration the following year.
He opposed the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985 and the Belfast Agreement which led to the first resumption of devolution under David Trimble.
Not only has he denounced, in the strongest imaginable language, the evils of Irish Nationalism and Republicanism, but he also fought a long-running and bitter feud with the Ulster Unionists.
Virtually every Ulster Unionist leader was branded as either a traitor or a Judas, determined to sell Northern Ireland into a united Ireland.
Mr Paisley sat in the old Stormont Parliament from 1970-72 where he made a name for himself as a man who could not be compromised.
Elected as Protestant Unionist Party MP for North Antrim in 1970 he has topped the poll in every election since. He was an MEP from 1979 to 2004 - and got kicked out of the Strasbourg chamber on his first day for denouncing the Pope as the anti-Christ.
In 1972 he formed the DUP which after decades as the No 2 of unionist politics came to the fore when it swept the UUP aside at the 2005 general election and again at last year's Assembly election. Ironically when he stood down as an MEP he was succeeded by Jim Allister of the DUP - who went on to quit the party when Paisley went into government with Sinn Fein.
He has since mounted a Paisley-style campaign against Mr Paisley. A member of his newly-formed party created headlines in Northern Ireland last month when his electoral support at a council election led to the DUP losing an election it had been certain of winning.
During his long political career, street protest has oft been a weapon used at key times. He used it in 1965 when the then Irish Taoiseach Sean Lemass visited Stormont and again and again and again.
In 1981 he organised rallies against talks between Margaret Thatcher and Irish counterpart Charles Haughey. In the mid 80s as the Anglo-Irish Agreement was signed he fronted members of Ulster Resistance wearing red berets at rallies in the Ulster Hall.
On another occasion he led 500 men brandishing firearms certificates up a Co Antrim hill in the dead of night. The DUP distanced itself from the organisation after it was implicated in trying to import arms from South Africa.
The biggest of the "Ulster Says No" rallies brought an estimated 200,000 unionists to the grounds of Belfast City Hall to voice their opposition to the Agreement.
In 1995 he played a part in the first stand-off over the Orange Order Drumcree parade. When the police finally agreed the parade should be forced down the nationalist Garvaghy Road Paisley's "victory jig" with David Trimble was seen as the triumphalism act which has prevented marches ever since.