Super Pimp casts a long shadow over Bangkok. Wherever you turn, there he is; on television, the front page of newspapers and billboards, beetroot face contorted into its trademark twisted rictus, moustache aquiver with indignation and finger jabbing at some imagined outrage, ready to launch his next blow against corruption and injustice. One can almost imagine him swooping down from out of the sun, pimp cape flapping, patrolling the phalanx of fleshpots he built then disowned, eyes peeled for fresh perps.
Every metropolis gets the superhero it deserves. For the City of Angels, a town built on graft and grease and dirt and deals, on tortuous alliances and labyrinthine loyalties, internecine squabbles, snout-in-trough sweeteners and baht pro quo back-scratching, who could be more suitable to step forward and save the day than the flawed, fabulously entertaining and crazy crusader that is Chuwit Kamolvisit?
Thailand's former massage-parlour king and self-professed pimp-turned-member of parliament is revelling in his role as thorn in the government's side, whistleblower and stirrer in chief. After seeing his party win four seats in the recent election - a result that shocked many but revealed a deep-seated disgust among Bangkok's middle class with the two big parties: the defeated Democrats, still headed by faded poster boy Abhisit Vejjajiva; and the governing Puea Thai party, led by Yingluck Shinawatra - Chuwit is riding high. And with a deep-seated fear abroad that the blood-soaked belligerence of the red and yellow shirts may not yet be consigned to history's dustbin, locals are lapping up the comparatively light relief of the Chuwit sideshow while it lasts.
The pimp tag is not something that bothers him.
'It's OK. I was a pimp,' he says. 'I did what I did in the past, I owned a lot of massage parlours. Of course, I sold them all, but I can't complain if people still want to call me a pimp.
'Anyway, a politician is worse than a pimp, worse than a whore. I adore the whore. The whore trades something that she owns, her body, while the politician trades the country and what belongs to the people. So I say, go ahead, call me a pimp. I am Chuwit, Super Pimp. Just don't call me a politician.'
It's tempting to suggest he invest in a superfly mink-lined cape, perhaps a natty purple fedora and diamond-studded cane. As it is, his one concession to ghetto fabulous is his bull terrier, Motomoto, who was a prominent part of Chuwit's election efforts and featured on the most entertaining of his talk-of-the-town campaign posters.