Long before he threw a shoe at George Bush, Muntadar Al Zaidi already had a colourful past. An Iraqi journalist who served as a correspondent for the Iraq-owned, Egyptian-based station Al Baghdadia TV, Al Zaidi’s reports often focused on the plight of widows, orphans, and children in the US-led Iraq invasion.

This didn’t go unnoticed. On Nov 16, 2007, Al Zaidi was kidnapped by unknown assailants in Baghdad. He was also arrested twice by US armed forces serving in Iraq.

Still, the world knew nothing about Al Zaidi until he attended a press conference in Baghdad, held by the outgoing US president George Bush. Before the world’s media, Al Zaidi hurled his shoes at the president, calling him a “dog”. He was acting, he said, for “widows and orphans and all those killed in Iraq”.

The president himself was unhurt during the incident, ducking nimbly to avoid the shoes while his Secret Service bodyguards stood to the side.

Bu it soon became apparent that the incident — and Al Zaidi’s subsequent arrest — had struck a chord worldwide. Thousands took to the streets in Iraq to protest his arrest while some 200 lawyers offered their services to the journalist. The journalist was hailed as a hero in Syria, while cobblers in Turkey and Lebanon lodged rival claims that they made the shoes.

In Tikrit a copper statue bearing the shape of the shoe was built as a monument, complete with a poem of honour.

Within days of the incident a computer game based on the row was released on to the internet. The game, named ‘Sock And Awe’, encouraged players to hurl flying footwear at a virtual Bush’s head.

Meanwhile, the Lebanese television channel NTV offered a job to Al Zaidi, claiming he would receive back-pay “from the moment the first shoe was thrown”.

Al Zaidi’s family declined an invitation from the Venezuelan president to come and live in the Latin American country, while the Malaysian foreign minister Rais Yatim praised the journalist, calling his actions the “best show of retaliation so far”.

To date, Al Zaidi has also been offered a six-door Mercedes, had a song written about him, had his shoe-hurling reconstructed in an Afghan comedy sketch, and been offered the hand of a man’s 20-year-old daughter in marriage.

Unfortunately he is unlikely to take up any of these offers, after an Iraqi court handed down a three year prison sentence earlier this month to the journalist.

Al Zaidi has the dubious honour of becoming the first ever Power 100 member to receive his accolade from behind bars.