Last year at a Las Vegas rally, Michael Sandford said he wanted a signature from presidential candidate Donald Trump and then lunged at him with a gun.

Luckily he was unsuccessful - but imagine if he had killed Trump. The last time a presidential nomineee was assassinated was Bobby Kennedy - JFK's brother in 1968. It would have made history. Maybe everything would be totally different - Beyoncé wouldn't be pregnant with twins, and maybe Scotland wouldn't have beaten Ireland in the Six Nations.

But Michael didn't kill anyone, police officers pinned him down and took him out the arena as swiftly as possible. Phew. I'd be really upset if I had to live in a world without Beyoncé's twins.

It turned out that the Brit has been living in the US for the last 18 months, allegedly moving there to be with a girl but actually living out of a rented car.

Although Michael made a statement after he was arrested that he had wanted to "shoot and kill Donald Trump," because "Donald Trump is a racist, he deserves to die" he is no radical activist. Turns out, Michael has some mental health problems.

When he was only two years old, he was diagnosed with OCD and later with Asperger's Syndrome. He also suffered so badly from anorexia that he had to be sectioned and his mood swings led him to try and throw himself in front of cars instead of going to school. He was also badly bullied.

23 days before the Trump rally, his parents reported him missing. They hadn't heard anything from him and were beginning to get really worried.

The day before, he went to a gun range only a mile away from the rally. The Safety Officer said he had never shot a gun before - and wasn't a good shot.

"Michael was not a good shot, just like any other shooter who has never shot and who is nervous," he says. "He seemed like a good kid, actually. Like he couldn't hurt a fly.

Michael's mum Lynne said that he became really erratic after moving to the States. "He turned very nasty at one point, and he'd always been so loving," she says in the BBC documentary The Brit Who Tried To Kill Trump. "At one point he actually said to me, 'you have no idea how much I hate, loathe and despise you'.

Michael's dad Paul thinks he was groomed or coerced into trying to shoot the presidential candidate. He had never shown any political or violent tendencies before.

In a maximum security prison in Nevada, Michael was facing up to 20 years in prison when he went to trial in Septmber. It seems that he made a complete 180, and felt huge regret for what he did. He made a statement at his trial:

"I would like to take this opportunity to apologise to everyone involved. I feel terrible and awful about what I did and am extremely ashamed of myself. I am not a violent person and I do not wish to harm or hurt anyone. I deserve to be in prison for the rest of my life.

"However, I would like to ask for mercy as my bad mental health was the reason for me committing this crime. I would like to be able to go home so I can be with my family and get the treatment I need."

But luckily for him, in December, the judge decided to cut it to only 12 months. The judge clearly saw a kid suffering from extreme mental health problems.

He said: "You're not a hardened criminal. You're not evil or a sociopath like a lot of people we have. I don't think you wanted to kill anybody. This was just some crazy stunt that your mind told you to do."