Jeff the Big Issue man, seen on Stokes Croft in the morning and on the Triangle outside NatWest for much of the rest of the day when he isn’t riding around on his bicycle, is featured in this week’s Big Issue in their ‘Vendor’s view’ section on the very last page of the magazine that he sells every day.

Such is Jeff Knight’s popularity that, at the last count, 13,330 people have liked a Facebook page calling on him to be an official Olympic torch bearer.

Other people, however, are not such big fans.

In the comments section underneath the Evening Post article about his nomination, he is accused of being a nuisance, intimidating, a wastrel, chancer and irritating.

One commenter went as far as to say: “Jeff Knight is given money (thousands of pounds over the years) to help him find a home, yet he fritters it away on luxuries and makes no visible attempt to find a job or permanent accommodation. He rides a bicycle, eats ice cream, wears good-condition clothes, and spends all day hassling hapless pedestrians.”

Jeff himself seems bemused but flattered by all the attention. “It took me by surprise, there are thousands and thousands of them. And I appreciate them, trust me. Hopefully I’ll get it. There’s a first for everything, one in a million, you know?”

After growing up in Jamaica, Jeff moved to England in 1998 and lived in London, Birmingham, “everywhere”, before arriving in Bristol eight years ago and originally living with a family in Easton before “certain things didn’t go right”.

“It does me well,” Jeff says of his days selling the Big Issue, “I can survive, can do everything – eat food, have a drink, have a smoke. ‘Live on, that’s life’ – that’s my motto. So long as we live on, that’s the key to success.”

He cryptically concludes: “We don’t call the egg afore it hatches. Look at all this sunshine today, it’s a miracle! I’m like the weather, praise the Lord!”

Jeff is just one of the characters who populate the streets of Bristol. Near his position on the Triangle is an old man with a beard who plays the penny whistle. Sticking to this part of town, I once spotted the man usually asking for change outside  Clifton Down getting his groove on to a Mumford & Sons instore gig at Rise.

There’s another Jeff, Big Jeff (left), always at the front of gigs headbanging his huge blond afro. Another older music fan normally only seen in the summer has a penchant for very small shorts and a white vest shirt.

Then there’s the infamous Gloucester Road jogger, who bounces up and down the road at all hours of the day in his running kit.

A Twitter appeal last night revealed a whole list of favourites: the old woman who wears the multicoloured leotards on Whiteladies Road, Sean who makes the coffees at the cart outside St Nic’s Market, the “shouting Christian” in Broadmead, the “former Salcombe Road stone sweeper lady”, famously flamboyant transvestite and Gloucester Road favourite Sapphire, and “the lady who stood in the centre of Broadmead in her wedding dress every Saturday being the bride of Christ”.

Other noticeable shout-outs go to the “honk for peace” crew standing on the centre opposite the Hippodrome, red-trousered architect George Ferguson, and organic vegan flapjack lady, who only this week I saw sell the only flapjack I have ever seen her sell to a poor tourist by the Arnolfini.