I've always been a bit suspicious of this John from Hull. the basic persona is quite coherent and convincing, vaguely jovial cretin liable to fits of drunken gibberings, living in a state ofconvivial gormless innocence, and totally ignorant of almost everything. Yet he consistently comes up with the most vicious, studied afterthought put-downs that you could imagine. A total master of understated invective. I think that is the mask slipping, the Machiavellian monster showing his true face,his vanity momentarily preventing his maintaining the adopted character. i think we possibly have soemthing in the nature of a Moriarty-type super-criminal among us.