I’M pretty sure that if I tell you that I propose to say something nice about Jamie Bryson you’d suspect that whatever I say will come loaded with qualifiers and yes-buts. And you’d be right. But Interflora doesn’t snip the thorns off its roses before sending out deliveries and when you put the bouquet in that crystal vase on the coffee table, the flowers are still what’s important. So here goes.

Jamie Bryson is a very smart guy. That may not be reflected in his qualifications – but so what? The Stormont Assembly isn’t what you would call a tribute to third-level education and our council chambers can seem like a political spin-off of Care in the Community. Simon Harris, who was the most important person on the island until he lost the bap in a shop in Kanturk, snubbed a university education in favour of a job in politics. 

I have no way of knowing because I can’t teleport myself to whatever North Down seaside primary and secondary schools Jamie attended, but I love a punt and I’ll bet good money that he was consistently one of the brightest kids in class. I’ll go further and say that in most years, if not all, he was the top of the form.

The evidence is there in spades. He’s an absolutely fearless speaker and hasn’t a qualm about who he goes up against in the field of debate. He’s very rarely bested on the airwaves and his innate, raw intelligence and ability to think on his feet have seen countless opponents remove the earphones ruing their decision to take him on. 

He gets ribbed mercilessly for a very common, low-level difficulty with the letter ‘R’, but to his credit he’s pulled off the same feat as fellow hardliner and consonant battler Jim Allister: He’s made that part of his URL and those reduced to throwing out exhausted sub-Monty Python jokes are not only conceding defeat, they’re highlighting a gaping hole in the fabric of their republican grá for rights and equality. 

As if the intelligence and debating prowess weren’t enough, part of the Jamie package is a gift – a genius, we might say – for garnering publicity. In a media supermarket whose currency is clicks and hits, Jamie sets the tills ringing. Of course he does, the cry goes up – he says things to wind people up and the tabloids and the phone-ins love it. But that’s only true up to a point. There are many people from both sides of the aisle who indulge in cynical look-over-here antagonism, but if that’s all it was Jamie would have gone the way of all the others and be remembered only by the odd meme or audio clip.

The truth, unpalatable as it is to the keyboard flying columns, is that he has the X Factor. And since the X Factor only exists because nobody knows what it is, it leaves me only to say I have no idea what it is that he has, but I know he has it in spades. 

Not only has Jamie Bryson endured, he has done so without the benefit of a political structure. In the Flag and Flute he'll occasionally prop the bar up with Ben Habib and Kate Hoey, a couple of determinedly maverick voices to whom the union seems more like a hobby than a burning passion. You won’t find him around the pool table with a pint in his hand in the midst of a pack of braying party hacks, but while his stubborn refusal to engage in party politics is something that demands respect, it’s also perhaps his greatest weakness.

Jamie flies solo not because he wants to go somewhere that his fellow unionists don’t – he does it because he thinks he’s the only one with a pilot’s licence. He's inordinately pleased with himself, and while that's almost a sine qua non of a life in politics, his opinion of others too often seems in inverse proportion. While there are plenty of people with more than their fair share of intelligence and ego, within a political party their more controversial or outré thoughts and utterances go through the corporate filter. Alone at his keyboard, Jamie’s a furious Catherine wheel of consciousness, spitting out a non-stop, crackling stream of thoughts and ideas, none of which come with a quality control stamp – European Community or UK.

And so it is that while there’s not a single politician who isn’t plagued by ill-advised past utterances – Emma Little-Pengelly’s bus stop brainfart, for instance, or Michelle O’Neill’s ‘no alternative’ penalty kick to unionism – Jamie’s social media gaffes are so legion it’s quite possible that every one of his 40,000 Twitter followers has their own favourite. But when you’re embarrassed not in the company of other people, but in the company of your coffee mug and your portrait of Lord Carson, it doesn’t sting anywhere near as much. Jamie's problem is that embarrassment is supposed to hurt.

Ultimately, if Jamie’s aversion to organised politics continues it means that he’s destined to be a heckler – albeit an in-demand one – not an achiever. Deprived of a political stage on which to strut and fret his hour, he’ll continue his courtroom amateur dramatics as a side-hustle, the mounting plucky underdog losses to m’learned friends bouncing off him perhaps not as regularly as his Twitter face-palm moments, but just as surely.

Saviour Syndrome is often the curse of the smart and the weight of that burden can be seen in the morphing of the boyish enthusiast in an East 17 anorak into today's careworn functionary in a suit and Rangers tie. After his latest Irish Sea border court reversal this week, a tweet of his was supposed to trumpet defiance and resilience: “There must be no more generosity, no more GAA pandering, Irish dancing or Irish language speaking ‘gestures’. Give them absolutely nothing. Not an inch. Never forget 10 December 2024. Power sharing should be dead and buried.” In reality, it came across more as a whimper of resignation, particularly in light of DUP Education Minister Paul Givan’s response to Jamie's plea, which was to go hurling at my old school 12 hours later.

Are the embarrassments finally starting to sting? Is the long and lonely struggle for the soul of Loyal Ulster beginning to take its toll? Is it time for Jamie to gather up his courage, leave his lonely desk and get into a busy political space? If it is, that would prove as much a struggle for his putative co-workers as it would for him, but he'd be all the better for it.

They say that being smart is only half of being smart; the other half is knowing what you’re stupid about. For somebody so obviously bright and quick, that’s a lesson Jamie’s terribly slow in learning.