The chain-smoking father of eight who rose from a British railway porter to Zambia's president has died aged 77.
Michael 'King Cobra' Sata, who had been in office for just three years, died at a private London hospital last night more than a month after he was last seen in public.
The charismatic president gained his nickname for his 'scorched-earth' politics and venomous barbs against opponents, one of whom was charged with defamation for calling him a potato.
But to his supporters he was a reformer who promised to hack back growing Chinese industry and sweep Zambia cleaner than he swept London's Victoria station in the 1960s.
Michael Chilufya Sata was born in 1937 into a poor district of the British colony of Northern Rhodesia, which would win independence as Zambia in 1964.
With little basic schooling he joined a Catholic seminary aiming to become a priest, but changed his mind and would eventually enter the police force instead.
He got involved in politics and trade unions, and after a controversial arrest - which he claimed was linked to his battles for independence - he came to London in the 1960s.
There he worked as a platform cleaner at the capital's Victoria and London Bridge stations before becoming a porter for British Rail, alongside other work on the railways.
He studied part-time and took casual jobs, including at a laundry in Bromley, Kent, at the Vauxhall car plant in Luton, Bedfordshire, before returning home and beginning his career in the police.
The enthusiastic taxidermist flitted between jobs - including on the board of a taxidermy firm - before becoming an active member of the United National Independence Party (UNIP).
From there it would be a slow rise to power through the newly-independent one-party state.
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