Possible Clues:

• Irascible
• Clever office worker Ed initially embarrassed is easily riled
• Petulant Express journalist going after moderate
• Swift, occasionally works in office, in hospital and in the press, like a bear with a sore head
• Fiery
• Easily angered
• Easily angered but without delay made resilient
• Irascible but intelligent peer met eccentric duke
• Quarrelsome mallard's beginning to peck quite frenziedly, cardinal concludes
• Irascible communist once living by wooded valley ahead