HE HAS ADMITTED to smoking crack, been repeatedly filmed drunk in public and even been criticised for wearing a sports team’s jersey – by the team.

Toronto mayor Rob Ford was elected on a populist wave in 2010, pledging to “stop the gravy train” and tackle the Canadian city’s powerful unions.

In the three years since, Ford has managed to, in non-chronological order :

• Admit to smoking crack
• Deny that a video of him smoking crack existed until the Chief of Police confirmed its existence
• See his driver and confidante, with whom he shared 711 phone calls in a six month period, be indicted in drug trafficking and extorting two gang members over said crack video
• Be so drunk he was asked to leave a charity event for veterans
• Be accused of racially abusing a taxi driver after holding a “wild party” that involved an escort in his office on St Patrick’s Day
• Be accused of inappropriately touching political opponents
• Use graphic language about his home sex life
• Be filmed ranting on video, apparently high, saying “I just need f*cking minutes to make sure he’s dead“
• Be asked by 37 of the 42 members of Council to take a leave of absence
• Have his mayoral duties scaled back massively
• Admit to drinking and driving
• Be removed as mayor, then reinstated  as mayor for a conflict of interest
• Suspend a political aide for calling into the mayor’s radio show posing as a listener and slamming political opponents
• Remove paying customers from a bus so that it could collect the high school football team he coached
• Personally request the roads around his family business be improved by the council in time for a 50th anniversary party
• Pledge to lose 50lbs as part of a public health campaign and lose just 17, falling off a scale and twisting his ankle on the last day
• Threaten journalists and call them “pathological liars“
• Repeatedly vote against measures that grant money to community organisations

Yet, according to the most recent opinion polls, Rob Ford has a higher approval rating than any Irish political leader.

Indeed, his 40 per cent approval rating as of Saturday puts him a full 17 points ahead of Taoiseach Enda Kenny and 14 points ahead of Micheál Martin, the most popular Irish leader.

Ford’s approval is only slightly lower than that of US President Barack Obama, who holds a 41.5 per cent approval.

Not only that, Canadians are rushing, well not rushing, strolling, to Ford’s defence.

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