This has been a traumatic few weeks for Sam, what with the national spotlight shining so directly into life in Snort Towers as a result of what has come to be known as the “Nannygate” affair.

The Snort family is no different to any other and the last thing we wanted was to have to iron our dirty linen in public, but I’m afraid the errant domestic help left us with no alternative. The fact that the judge saw fit to award the nanny a miserly sum of ten million euro in damages is, I feel, as clear a vindication as you could wish for of the rightness of my decision to chase her off the premises with a pitchfork.

Rock Aristocracy
The whole sorry saga began when I placed an ad in a reputable magazine (Hustler) for a nanny. The ad specifically spelt out that duties would include feeding, winding, nappy-changing, dressing and all the other usual stuff. What could be more straightforward than that? The nanny didn’t see it that way, however, and after just a few days began to complain that not only had she yet to see a child about the house, but it didn’t really seem right to her for a grown man to arrive down for breakfast in a nappy, demanding a high chair and, indeed, a good spanking for being late.
In turn, I calmly pointed out that any junior Snorts who might have emerged over recent years – and, anyway, who’s counting? – would all be away at expensive boarding schools, and for the nanny to complain that kiddies were singularly thin on the ground in Snort Towers bespoke a breathtaking unfamiliarity with the life of the rock aristocracy.
As for my hobby of relaxing with Pampers and baby powder, surely in modern Ireland we have come to terms with the wonderful diversity of human sexuality and now find nothing wrong in the kind of good-natured role play that regularly attracts some of our leading bankers, politicians, priests and even the odd judge to dimly-lit basement rooms off city centre back alleys.
Sam could understand the nanny’s chagrin if, say, he’d lit up a cheroot in her presence but that was never going to happen. Snort Towers was her workplace after all and, anyway, I find that it’s not really practical to smoke a cigarette when you’ve already got a big pink soother stuck in your gob.
Sam was also put out by the fact that the court refused to take into evidence the many witness statements to the effect that I like to ride a jetski drunk, spend most of my afternoons and evenings pissed, and that my nickname among the hired help is always “Keef”, never “Mick”.
As a result, readers of the tabloids will have been left with a very inaccurate picture of life in Snort Towers, effectively one of an adult in nappies, ceaselessly ironing.
This is a gross defamation – what I actually said was that I like “irony”. But, of course, the tabloids have never heard of that, with the result that the public has been left with an image of one of the leading figures of the counter-culture as a compulsive flattener of shirts.
The truth is that life in Snort Towers is a non-stop chaotic rollercoaster of drugs, drink, violence. glamour excess and synchronised swimming. In short, it’s rock ‘n’ roll, baby.
And for anyone to suggest anything otherwise is a blatant libel.

Camel Shawl
Finally, this week, I want to pay tribute to my man Col Muammar Gadafy, a great chieftain who is famous for many things, not least the fact that no two people have ever agreed on how to spell his name.
But, boy, has the Colonel got the image thing down pat. I quote from the Irish Times, reporting on his recent visit to Europe: “Col Gadafy was magnificent in a camel shawl over a brown, silk costume, his luxuriant black hair and ageing rock star features topped by a small, black fez.”
And if that isn’t cool enough, what about his personal security?
“Behind him stood four female bodyguards, dressed in blue camouflage fatigues and peaked caps…”
So, one more time with feeling, let’s here it for Muammar Gadafy – the Robert Palmer of international statesmen.

Your ever lovin’ Samuel J. Snort Esq