I find aviation to be absolutely crammed with "characters" (meaning very forceful personalities, not foolhardy pilots - I've met very few of those). Hardly surprising, as it is a tough world in which to make a commercial success of things, and unlikely to attract particularly passive personalities. In any small world where you have a lot of forceful people, inevitably they will rub occasionally rub each other up the wrong way.
Douglas Bader and Neil Williams, both childhood heros of mine, were just two people who demostrated the positive ways in which a forceful and charismatic personality could drive achievement, but who in other ways had a reputation for "not suffering fools" to put it mildly!
For his sheer determination and refusal to back down in the face of bureaucratic interference, Mark Jefferies has to regarded as a modern-day aviation "character", and I admire his achievements in popularising the Yak in the UK and keeping Little Gransden alive and well.