Muammar Gaddafi was the "Brotherly Leader" of Libya from 1969 until 2011. Few figures in Middle Eastern politics court as much controversy as the highly eccentric Gaddafi, with his idiosyncratic style having been parodied by actors, and mimicked by other politicians. Gaddafi's long rule can be seen as an agonising decline from popular anti-imperialist "saviour" of Libyans in the 1970s to cruel and isolated despot murdered by his own people in 2011.  My guest for this conversation is Tim Niblock, emeritus professor at the University of Exeter, and one of Europe's foremost voices on Libyan and Middle Eastern politics; he also met Gaddafi during the late 1990s.