His friends called him Luke. Or Louis. Or even resorted to his real name of Martin, which he shared with both his father and the eldest of his three sons. As a wrestler he was introduced to audiences at different stages of his career as Haystack Colhoun or Luke McMaster, but never under the surname by which his birth was registered - Ruane. The real mystery, however, was why fame found him as the incongruous Giant Haystacks.

That he was a giant was undeniable, as he stood 6ft 11in, and crushed the scales at upwards of 50 stones, though it required a weighbridge. Ma Haystacks knew all about it. Baby Martin was 14lbs 6oz at birth in 1946. There was an Irish Grandpa Haystacks who was allegedly 7ft 5in.

But why did Martin Ruane become more than a single haystack? And why haystacks, in the first place?

The plural construction may be explained by the sheer bulk of the man, so immense that there were ample grounds for imagining him, like a pantomime dragon, to be at least two. But there was nothing rural about Martin Ruane's background, which was in Salford, Manchester, where he left school at 14 and worked variously in a woodwork factory, a tyre firm, in motorway construction gangs, and as a nightclub bouncer before he made professional wrestling his career. Neither did ''Giant Haystacks'' particularly portray the nasty, wild, brutish, and intimidating image which he cultivated successfully, against a better nature, which was mild, philosophical, and sensitive. Like a genuine haystack, he was warm, soft, and accommodating. The most likely explanation for the coinage of Giant Haystacks was that, in the early days, he wore a costume that looked as though it had been made by sewing together

odd ends of sacking. This, along with his straggly mane and unkempt beard, suggested rustic with attitude.

The real man was a pacifist, though he said that wrestling gave him an outlet. This may have had less to do with latent aggression than an enjoyment of leading the emotions of audiences in an often choreographed entertainment. He once said he felt like the conductor of the Halle Orchestra, presumably in a performance of Night On A Bare Mountain. He was also deeply religious, a devout Catholic, and a family man devoted to his wife Rita, the childhood sweetheart he married at 17, and their sons Martin, Stephen, and Noel.

His Haystacks persona provided obstacles to domestic harmony. Much of his career was spent driving the British motorways and staying at cheap B&Bs. Even at his peak, bouts would rarely bring in more than #600 a week. This also earned him 10 broken fingers, both kneecaps smashed, bust elbows, cracked ribs, lost front teeth, and snapped collarbones, though it could be argued that he risked similar damage at his weight if he even so much as fell out of bed. He was a danger to himself and others, which was his public appeal.

Until 1988, when wrestling finally came off the schedules, his audience was largely through television. Paul McCartney was a fan. Frank Sinatra and Lord Jenkins were enthusiastic, and the Queen Mother would never miss one of his epic fights. The highlight of many a Saturday matinee televised bill was the entrance of his professional foe Big Daddy to exact revenge on Giant Haystacks for a beating inflicted on a smaller, weaker, and down-the-bill partner. It was a form of televised catharsis never quite recaptured in snooker, and Haystacks himself was a critic of the diet of sex, violence, murder, and scandal which he perceived as the staples of British terrestrial viewing.

A new era of televised wrestling has returned through satellite and cable coverage of the American circuit. A revival of the Haystacks career seemed within mighty grappling range when he signed a deal with his wrestling colleague Hulk Hogan. He had been relaunched as The Loch Ness Monster, the bad man from the mountains. Illness, however, wasted his frame to a mere 24 stones. It proved to be the one opponent he could not bounce out of the ring.