With his shock of platinum blonde hair some people called Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders "Mozart" and he is always good for a political show.

Wilders' campaign against "Islamisation" has drawn criticism across Europe. Reviled and revered for his anti-immigrant rhetoric, the head of the Party for Freedom (PVV), which has won control of a Dutch town for the first time, has to live in secret with 24 hour protection because of threats to his life.

He rarely ventures out in public, and never without a massive security detail.

Wilders, 46, makes no apology however for the deep cracks he has cut in a long tradition of Dutch consensus politics with bold strides onto the shaky ground of multi-cultural tolerance.

"We dare to talk about sensitive subjects like Islamisation and we use plain and simple words that the voter can understand," is how Wilders explains his popularity.

The PVV came first in elections Wednesday in the city of Almere and second in The Hague -- the only two municipalities it contested in its first local election.

Wilders created the anti-Islam film "Fitna", a 17-minute commentary featuring shock imagery of attacks on New York in 2001 and Madrid in 2004 combined with quotes from the Koran, Islam's holy book, which he says is "fascist".

It outraged Muslim countries after its release in March 2008 despite opposition from the Dutch government who feared it might spark a militant response similar to that which followed the publication in Denmark of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

Wilders describes his far-right label as "nonsense".

"My supporters say: 'at last there is someone who dares to say what millions of people think'. That is what I do," Wilders told AFP ahead of the European elections last year, in which the PVV took four of the 25 Dutch seats.

"People are fed up with the government; the leftist elite that has failed them," said Wilders.

He has been living under 24-hour protection for the past five years due to death threats.

Wilders started his political career in the liberal VVD party which he quit after 14 years in 2004, partly over its support at the time for Turkey's entry into the European Union.

Having started as a policy advisor and speech writer for the VVD, Wilders was elected a municipal councillor in 1997 and MP the following year, becoming an independent lawmaker when leaving the party in 2004.

He created the PVV for parliamentary elections in 2006, campaigning to "limit the growth of Muslim numbers" in the Netherlands, and taking nine out of 150 seats. Some polls says his party is now the most popular in the Netherlands.

Arguing that "Islam is the Netherlands' biggest problem," Wilders has urged parliament to ban the Koran, comparing it with Hitler's "Mein Kampf."

He also wants a total ban on the burqa as well as a halt to immigration from Muslim countries and the construction of mosques in the Netherlands.

He is awaiting a hate speech trial trial at home and was barred from entering Britain last year to stop him spreading "hatred and violent messages."

"I want to defend freedom, which I think will disappear into thin air the moment the Islamic ideology gains a stronger foothold on this country," Wilders, who is married to a Hungarian, told AFP.

"It is truly a mission and I personally pay a high price. For years, it has been all but comfortable."

"Certainly, I have the ambition to become prime minister," Wilders said. "We don't want to remain in opposition forever."