[Amy]

HUNTING supporter and former joint master of the New Forest Foxhounds Derek Laud has saddled up for the bitchiest of television bloodsports as a contender on the new series of Big Brother, which burst on to the screens at the weekend.

The black, openly gay and right-wing political lobbyist is remembered as a colourful character by members of the New Forest Hounds, where he enjoyed several seasons hunting and was joint master in 1999.

His appointment as the first black master of foxhounds attracted a great deal of media attention and was widely viewed as a publicity stunt to rid hunting of its white upper-crust image and bolster Laud's own political profile.

Laud, 40, who was born in London although his family roots are in Jamaica, first came to prominence in the 1990s when he became the first black member of another bastion of conservatism, the right-wing Monday Club.

While he describes himself as a political researcher and parliamentary speech writer, his own hopes of entering parliament were dashed when he was forced to withdraw his candidature for the 1997 general election following a drink-drive conviction in America.

But he has kept himself on the fringes of the tabloid headlines.

It was dinner with Derek Laud which provided the alibi for pals Christine and Neil Hamilton when they were falsely accused of committing sexual offences with a woman later jailed for perjury.

And earlier this year he was at the centre of another storm in a political tea cup when an apocryphal tale of the Laud wit was cited by right-wing Tory MP Gerald Howarth in a speech attacking political correctness.

The story goes that while out hunting Laud was confronted by a protester who asked why he was hunting with people who a hundred years ago would have been hunting his ancestors.

"A hundred years ago, my ancestors would have been eating you," is Laud's reputed riposte.

Graham Ferris, joint secretary of the New Forest Hounds, said such remarks were typical of Laud who was noted for his "irreverent and totally non-PC" sense of humour.

"I don't want to comment on his horsemanship, but he was certainly a colourful character," he said.

This Is Bournemouth