For a man who has overseen one Gulf War, taken the flak for another and suffered four heart attacks along the way, one might have thought there would be stiff competition for that superlative. But shooting his friend in the face last Saturday took the biscuit for Dick Cheney, the brunt of political jokes for two presidential terms and now assured of a permanent place in the comedy canon.

The US vice-president's shooting of Harry Whittington, a Texas lawyer, briefly stopped being funny on Monday when the victim suffered a heart attack and it appeared he might die. But a day is a long time in intensive care, and as soon as Harry was sitting up again, Cheney was belatedly engaged in damage limitation on Fox News. His aides had floated a notion that Whittington had selfishly got between Dick and a quail, but on Fox, Cheney wisely . . . and uncharacteristically . . . declined to blame his friend for being the architect of his own injury:

"You can't blame anybody else.

I'm the guy who pulled the trigger and shot my friend."

Whittington's wounds were immediately obvious, yet the questions remains as to why it took so long to call 911. Even less clear is the extent of Cheney's injuries. By the end of the week, it seemed unlikely he would resign, but equally, it seemed clear that if Cheney has any remaining political ambitions, he should shelve them. Happily for Dick, in political terms he has already been to the top of the mountain.

Happily for the rest of us, he wasn't armed at the time.

He was born in Casper, Wyoming, in 1941 . . . an accident of birth, one critic wrote, that meant "his brain crystallised into its current form just before the 1960s introduced the idea of fun into American life".

At Natrona County High School, he was a solid football player, senior class president and an above-average student.

And he got to date the Girl Most Likely. Lynne Vincent was the star of the school . . . the brightest, the prettiest, the most athletic . . . a generation later, she might have been president. As it was, Lynne Vincent had to settle for being vice-president's wife.

After school, Cheney headed for Yale . . . George W's alma mater . . . but he dropped out and returned home to marry Lynne and pursue a degree in the University of Wyoming, and later, an MA in political science at Wisconsin. He avoided being sent to Vietnam twice during his student years . . . first, because he was an undergraduate and later, when Lynne was just 10 weeks' pregnant, he cited a draft exemption that applied to men with dependants.

Criticised later for staying in Wyoming, he said: "I had other priorities in the '60s than military service." Drinking would appear to have been one of them: by the end of the decade, he'd been convicted of drinkdriving twice.

He stayed with the University of Wyoming to pursue a doctorate, but the pull of politics proved too strong, and the young Republican arrived in Washington at the end of the 1960s. He secured a job in the Nixon administration, working closely with then senator Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld, in turn, was close to Gerald Ford, and when the latter became the Accidental President, he brought Rumsfeld along as his chief of staff.

Cheney came too, as Rumsfeld's deputy.

When Rumsfeld moved to defence in 1975, Cheney ascended to chief of staff, a position he held until Jimmy Carter and the Democrats swept to power at the end of 1976. Out of favour and out of a job, Cheney returned to Wyoming and began building up a local power base which he translated into votes in the following year's elections. In 1978, he took his seat in the House of Representatives. In the same year, at the age of just 37, he suffered the first of his four heart attacks.

He rose quickly through the ranks of Congress, endearing himself to Ronald Reagan for his hawkish views on foreign policy and his almost fevered support for the Star Wars missile programme.

His hardline conservatism stretched to gun control . . . no, abortion . . . no, and has latterly taken on environmental concerns . . . broadly speaking, they're a no, as well. Only on gay rights does Cheney refuse to surf the right-wing: his eldest daughter, Mary, is a lesbian and a prominent voice in the gay community.

When Bush Sr was elected in 1988, Cheney was appointed secretary for defence. It was Cheney who led the charge in the first Gulf War, flying to Saudi to persuade King Fayed to allow US troops land there.

It was this deployment . . . seen by many Arabs as a foreign occupation . . . that so angered Osama bin-Laden and prompted his declaration of jihad against the west.

The Clinton era signalled a downturn in his political fortunes and, in 1995, he became chief executive of Halliburton, a massive oil industry construction company. It made him a fortune, but tainted him forever as an enemy of environmentalists and a slave to fossil fuels. In the wake of the Iraq invasion in 2003, questions were asked about government contracts . . . worth more than $1bn . . . awarded to Halliburton.

He quit the company in 2000 to take up the vice-presidential nomination. Just weeks before polling day, he suffered his fourth heart attack, prompting serious concern about his health and his ability to lead the country if his boss suffered a misfortune. Six months later, the new vice-president was fitted with a pacemaker.

Yet rumours about Cheney's health persisted. On 11 September, after planes crashed into the Twin Towers, Cheney disappeared from public view and was not seen again for three days. The internet would have it that he suffered another heart attack . . . the official version is that he was whisked away to an undisclosed location in case the president was taken out by the terrorists.

His wife introduces him in public as "America's grandfather" and he is certainly not without doting underlings.

Timothy Walch, author of a book on the vice-presidency in the 20th century, sums up Cheney thus: "You might say, 'I don't really want to make small talk with the guy, but if I ever need to go to my lawyer's office or get someone to be the executor of my estate or take care of my children after I die, I'd pick Dick Chene. y'" He's just clearly not a man you'd want to go hunting with.

Richard Cheney Occupation: vice-president of the United States Born: 30 January 1941;

Casper, Wyoming Educated: Yale; University of Wyoming; University of Wisconsin Married: To Lynne Vincent, 1964; two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth In the news: During a quail hunt, he accidentally shot his friend, Harry Whittington, in the face and chest