Ribit is a bloke?  
Well now, we learn something new everyday...   
I thought he was a redneck's redneck!   You say he is a lovable bloke...   That's not what miz ribit said.. 
Which leads to another question.  Are you really a closet Brit?  They use the term bloke in everyday language...  Many decades a freshly arrived Brit entered into my Engineering team . He was a former Jaguar engineer.  He gave me about a thousand reasons to never buy one..  
But he always referred to another guy as a Bloke...   
So we nicknamed him "the Bloke".   
Now, what seems a century later, you call the grayback Reb down in Georgia a bloke...    
Are you a closet Englishman per chance????  
Interesting choice of a word there Sir De !