In government, he has been uncomfortably subordinate to an unpredictable man.
But the coach is a volatile and unpredictable man who is unlikely to hang around if he feels that his useful work is done.
PH Premier League Football: Manchester United v Tottenham Hotspur 2pm, Sky Sports 1 Spurs visit the recently somewhat unpredictable Man United.
One House Republican with experience in the Bush administration, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so he could be frank about a fellow administration official, talked of an "unpredictable" man who "was not a good, solid member of the team".
The fact that Ms Sung has known him well for more than 30 years makes you read between the lines, and the picture that emerges from the book is of a lonely, unhappy and unpredictable man driven to obsessive secrecy and fits of rage.
Besides, one advised, he is an unpredictable man and it is "not recommended" that visitors call on him lest he decide to rob them, or shoot them, as one warlord is suspected of doing to four United Nations workers killed on this road two years ago.
Artistic judgment, shrewdness about people, money sense and self-discipline were all beyond the small, generous and unpredictable man who in 1960 wrote the extremely successful West End musical, Oliver!, signed away his rights in it as well as in his other works, and estimated years later, when he was skint, that he would have been £100 million better off if he hadn't.
That, especially in nominally more egalitarian times, is some sort of testimonial to the short, burly and sometimes unpredictable man, with a love for rare cars, who could so easily have strayed from private unhappiness into the role of public joke.
A deeply strange and unpredictable man whose ego knows no bounds, Polonsky is something like Russia's answer to Donald Trump.
"They were out of control and unpredictable young men," Fagan said.
