Many who saw the pictures of Prime Minister Lokendra Bahadur Chand shaking hands with Baburam Bhattarai at the Convention Centre on Monday wondered who the man in the middle was. It was none other than Rishi Dhamala (centre, pic right), the flamboyant chairman of the Reporters' Club Nepal, adroitly squeezing himself between the two so the cameras could catch him.

The occasion was the sixth anniversary of the club, and as it turns out, the prime minister wasn't told that the wily Dhamala would get him to shake hands with Bhattarai.

To his detractors, and they are legion, Dhamala is a self-seeking publicist who uses his club to shamelessly promote himself. But even his critics credit Dhamala with a nose for news that turns a Reporters' Club function itself into a news event.

Asked why he didn't warn his guests about the nature of the anniversary function on Monday, Dhamala told us: "I wanted to show that the process of reconciliation had begun." Although his intended message got twisted, the function got more public interest than most other face-to-face events conducted by the club so far.

Dhamala is not a modest man, that's for sure. He is often seen sitting sandwiched between celebrity invitees so he is always on the front page of newspapers and on television. "Look, I don't purposely get into the limelight," he says testily. "But I deserve credit for what I do."

In the last six years Reporters' Club Nepal has invited even the most inaccessible and media shy public figures for the pleasure of being grilled by Kathmandu's hacks. Controversial political leaders, timid bureaucrats, diplomats, ministers and prime ministers from home and abroad have all gone through the wringer.

Dhamala says his job is symbiotic: the journalists get access to figures they could not otherwise interview, and his guests get to talk to the entire press corps at one go. Whatever one may say about his abrasive style and self-publicity, Dhamala is self-made. He was jailed for hawking anti-Panchayat newspapers when he was just a high school student. The 30-year-old political science graduate was a full-time journalist until he founded Reporters' Club six years ago. Now he says he is ready to hand over the club to his successor and return to reporting again. "I crave for the rush of producing a daily newspaper," he confided.

But it isn't hard to imagine that beneath all that there is a political animal struggling to get out. "Yes, I would like to ultimately get into politics, and I have strong grassroots support in my home district of Dhading," he admits. In that case, all this exposure and rubbing shoulders with politicians will be useful.

But isn't he running out of guests to invite to his forum? Who is left? Rishi Dhamala doesn't hesitate with the answer: "The king."