An interesting insight into the big man Clive Palmer who also helped to dump Kevin Rudd.

Hickey recalls that ''he always did everything big''. It seems even back then Palmer was trying to intimidate his opponents. Before a game of touch football after high school, ''I remember he pulled up in his Jag with the sunroof open and Beethoven's Song of Joy was blasting out as loud as possible,'' Hickey says. ''The team squeezed into the car, hanging out the windows and he drove the Jag around the Pizzey Park playing field in Miami to put the other team off. He would have been 19 or 20 at the time.''

Palmer has since upgraded from an old Jag to a $5.3 million yacht, a 15-metre luxury boat, two McDonnell Douglas private jets and a helicopter. He has homes in Brisbane, Perth and Beijing, owns the Gold Coast United soccer team, and a CV that boasts meetings with Vladimir Putin and Pope Benedict XVI.

So how did the Melbourne boy who dropped out of a Queensland University law degree to make a fortune in real estate his late 20s become one of the biggest litigants in the country, take on the title of honorary professor and end up leading the mining industry's opposition to the super profits tax?


http://www.smh.com.au/business/a-master-tactician-with-nerves-of-steel-and-a-will-of-iron-20100625-z9oo.html