So who is Andrew Sheridan?

What a shame when you think fellow 'prop idol' Matt Stevens has the voice of an angel and Steve Thompson could bring along his imaginary banjo - the one he reckons he can't hit a cow's behind with on his off-days at the lineout. It could have been the Lions' first allsinging, all-dancing front row.

Sheridan is charmingly selfdeprecating about his other talents too. In case injury cut his career short, this Dulwich College old boy didn't want his professional cv to read solely "1998-2005 - Rolling Around In The Mud at Richmond, Bristol and Sale". So he started gearing himself to life beyond rugby in the building trade, studying to become a plumber and now doing his City and Guilds bricklaying course at college two evenings a week.

Then there's his weightlifting. Having bench pressed an extraordinary 475lb - almost 34 stone - the suggestion on the Premiership circuit is that Sheridan might well be the strongest rugby player on the planet. He's heard it himself and is quite flattered but ask him for other examples of his prowess and he just teases that he hasn't yet tried to test out how many phone books he can rip up in one sitting.

"I've never been the sort of person to shout from the rooftops about myself. I'm pretty-laid back; you just have to believe in your own ability and quietly get on with it," said the gentle giant from Petts Wood who has suddenly found that, at 26 and in the form of his life, some distinguished voices have been shouting the odds for him.

Sheridan himself, whose only international appearance had come as a replacement against Canada, had assumed he didn't have "a cat in hell's chance" of Lions selection before Woodward made his penultimate cut.

Yet he's been so increasingly rampant in league combat this season that another grand outsized prop of old, Fran Cotton, was not alone in suggesting his rippling power and ball-carrying charges, which have given him a bit of cult status at Edgeley Park, could seriously discomfit the All Blacks. Woodward agreed.

Sheridan, who gets irritated at being tagged 'converted lock' or 'novice prop' or 'impact player', thinks it is about time the labels were dropped. After two and a half years, in which his collar size has expanded from 19in to 21in, he thinks he's earned the right to be considered a fully paid-up, grizzled member of the propping club.

Anyway, novices don't take apart hardened Premiership props the way he has been. No wonder Sale are alarmed that an ankle knock might sideline him from this weekend's play-off visit to Wasps.

In the Lions pecking order, he may start behind England veteran Graham Rowntree and dynamic Welshman Gethin Jenkins but, on form, he bows to no-one. Sheridan knows all about those fairytales of Englishmen like Jerry Guscott and Matt Dawson who embarked on tours as extras and came home as leading men. As he's getting married to girlfriend Siwan a couple of weeks after his return, he's at least assured of one starring role in July.

"Could I get in the Test team? Why not? Everyone's in with the same chance," he shrugged. "Clive said we're all going to have an opportunity to stake a claim but there are a lot of people on this tour so when you get the chance you've got to make each game count."

He fully intends to do so. When he tried on that XXL red jersey, he couldn't resist noting with a grin: "Fits well, doesn't it?" Well enough, you would hope, for no British sports fan to ever have to inquire again: "Who is Andrew Sheridan?".