Last week, some of the families of victims of 9/11 hit out at Giuliani's plans to attend the upcoming remembrance ceremony for the attack, accusing him of exploiting the event to boost his national profile during the race for presidential nominee. "This is my son's memorial service, " said the mother of one firefighter who died. "This isn't for a failed politician who wants to run for president."

His role at the ceremony has now been cut back; instead of reading out the list of the dead as he has done in previous years, he will just be reading a short passage from a text. For a man who trades on the respect and admiration he built up for his handling of 9/11, this snub had to hurt.

That controversy came hot on the heels of his clumsy backtrack over his recent claim that he spent more time at Ground Zero than most of the rescue workers did.

New York Fire and Police personnel were furious at the unlikely statement, while a study by the New York Times found that aside from the first six days for which there are no records, Giuliani spent a total of 29 hours on the site over three months . . . considerably less than the average recovery worker.

And it's not just his political life that has been in the spotlight; this month's edition of Vanity Fair features an unflattering profile of Judith Giuliani, Rudy's third wife, in which she is depicted as a shrill publicity-seeker who reserves a seat on private jets for her Louis Vuitton handbag and has too much control over what her husband does.

More than anything, the article has again raised questions over whether rural America will vote for someone whose personal life is somewhat less than squeaky clean.

Giuliani was born in Brooklyn in 1944 to second-generation Italian immigrants.

His schoolmates recall that he was never the smartest at school but always the hardest worker. He excelled at law in Manhattan College and New York University Law School, and quickly worked his way up to become US attorney for the Southern District of New York, chasing mobsters, corrupt public officials and Wall Street inside traders. However, his ambitions lay elsewhere, and after one unsuccessful attempt in 1989, he was elected mayor of NYC in 1994.

Over the course of his eight years in the job, he radically transformed the city.

When he took over in 1994, more than a million New Yorkers were on welfare, violent crime and crack cocaine had ravaged whole neighbourhoods, and taxes and unemployment were sky high. Giuliani vowed to make New York safe again. He ordered the NYPD to crack down on all crimes, no matter how small and it began to work . . . by the end of his first year, homicides in the city were down 18%. By the end of his tenure, the murder rate dropped by 67% and rape by 46%. It was safe to walk the streets again.

It wasn't all good news; at times his approval ratings in the black community dropped into the single digits.

He showed himself capable of pettiness too. When New York magazine ran an advertising campaign declaring itself "The only good thing in the city that Giuliani hasn't taken credit for, " he ordered the ads to be removed. The magazine later sued and won.

However by autumn 2001, he was ready to step down. A nasty public divorce and an even more public affair, as well as a battle with prostate cancer, had left him a lame duck mayor, killing time during the final four months of his tenure before he could move into the more lucrative private sector.

Then 9/11 happened.

On the morning of the attacks, he literally followed the sirens to Ground Zero and then stayed there for several days, barely sleeping, helping out with the rescue effort. In contrast to the perceived hands-off approach of George W Bush, Giuliani stepped into the breach, providing Churchillian-style leadership and constantly telling the city and its inhabitants that they had to soldier on.

As a result of his efforts, he was chosen as Time's Person of the Year, and was the subject of a gushing article in its December issue headlined "Mayor of the World." The piece, awash with mistyeyed prose, painted Giuliani as a roughhewn martyr who intentionally overpaid his taxes, foresaw the terrorist attacks and attended the bedside of almost every wounded police or fireman during his tenure as mayor.

It is safe to say that, without 9/11, Giuliani would not be in such a strong position now in the race for the presidential nomination. Indeed, he may not even have run.

Despite a rocky start to the campaign last November, when Giuliani had appeared awkward and uncomfortable giving speeches and talking to voters, he has managed to build on the lack of a clear front-runner among the Republican nominees.

He promises he will do for America what he did for New York City when he was mayor . . . rescue it, bring it through a difficult time and make it a better place for everyone to live. "Basically, what he's selling is, 'As dangerous a world as this is, I can make it safer', " says pollster Frank Luntz.

He manages to straddle a strange political divide, picking up votes both in rural America and in the cities, something which most candidates can't do. He glosses over his positions that may not be popular . . . such as his pro-abortion or anti-gun views . . . by convincing people to vote for him based on what he represents as a whole, rather than nit-picking over some of his policies.

His personal life has easily been his greatest liability, at times more suited to a New York tabloid than a presidential bid. His first marriage to his second cousin ended in divorce and then annulment.

His second marriage also ended badly; on the day he held a press conference to announce his divorce, his wife held her own conference to say she knew nothing about it. He married his third wife Judith in 2003.

If he is elected as the Republican nominee, he will face a tough contest against the Democrats, where the choice is between Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards. However the fact that he is contesting it at all is testament to the sheer scale of his ambition, coupled perhaps, with being the right person at the right time six years ago.

Whether this is enough to win it for him is a different matter.

CV

Name: Rudolph Giuliani
Born: Brooklyn, 1944
Occupation: Lawyer; mayor of New York City 1994-2001; currently seeking the Republican Party nomination for US President
In the news because: families of 9/11 victims have accused him of using next week's remembrance ceremony to boost his national profile