It's the question rock fans had grappled with for years: "What the fuck is it going to take to get Sam Snort out of rehab and back doing the kind of lines he does best?”

Those lines, of course, being a reference to the rip-roaringly entertaining prose I famously contributed for many aeons to the world's most essential music publication. I know, I know. People have been missing me a lot more than I have been missing them. Indeed whole Facebook pages have been devoted to the quest to bring Sam Snort back from the wilderness.

“Surely forty days and forty nights is long enough,” one true believer in the Latter Day Church of Samuel J. Snort III asked, and a cascade of replies confirmed that there was indeed a fearsome hunger out there for the return of the rock 'n’ roll prophet himself. Being me.

Yep, these apostles of the one true church of the totally poisoned mind wanted to know: could the great Snort kick the drugs, the money, the girls, the cars (Get on with it – Ed) and get himself upright in front of a computer long enough to compose his thoughts – or at least to dictate them to someone, before he passed out, or stormed off in one of his infamous temper tantrums (although some acolytes believe that these latter eruptions, in truth, are moments of sacred visionary hallucination)?

Well, friends, now you fuckin’ know – and I do too: this Coronoavirus shit has got so intense that it's moved even me to communicate my views – coming to you now by satellite-link from the special Snort Isolation Chamber, where I daily seek Facetime reassurance from the one man guaranteed to survive this and all other disasters natural and otherwise: my old rock ’n’ roll chum, the man I greet as ‘old leather face himself’, Keith ‘fucking’ Richards (pictured above with his old buddy, Mick "The Mick" Jagger).

HEAVILY GUARDED COMPOUND

Christ knows, it wasn't easy for the Mossad-trained goons hired specially for the purpose by Hot Press to track me down. If there's one thing you can say about me for certain it is this: I am good at getting lost. Nearly as good as I am at getting laid, come to think about it. But that’s another story for a different movie script.

Imagine the scene, folks.

We are inside the heavily guarded compound of a Colombian drug lord, late at night, with a clock in the corner of the screen indicating that it's 01:30 am. Inside, your as ever humble correspondent is involved in a tense exchange with notorious gangster and one-time cage-fighting supremo, Federico "The Animal" Esteban.

Sliding a package across the table in my direction, Esteban maintains eye contact as he opens the briefcase I've given him by way of exchange. Slyly ogling the greenbacks inside, beads of sweat pop into view on Esteban's forehead. Simultaneously reaching for his handkerchief, he signals to one of his henchmen to lean closer and whispers something into his shell-like. He eyeballs me again like a monkfish.

"You have delivered as always, Mr. Snort," he announces to the room as he rises to his feet. "I guess you truly are the Ayatollah of Rock ’n' Rolla!” The room-full of heavies erupts into nervous laughter. I pick up the package and stuff it into my inside pocket. "A pleasure as always, Mr Esteban,” I say.

He places his hands on my shoulders and kisses me on both cheeks. Stepping back, Esteban smiles like a hyena. "Just one more thing,” he says, arching his left eyebrow. "I hope you enjoyed that Gun N' Roses gig in Hong Kong." With that, he reaches into his jacket and takes out a gun. A Glock 42. Being Sam Snort, I can’t help but admire its small but perfectly formed body.

"For it will be your last!” Esteban barks triumphantly.

Suddenly I have a moment of crystal clarity. “The Animal" is about to pull the trigger!

In that very instant, a SWAT team comes crashing through the window, clearly intent on busting Colombia's two most wanted. Esteban looks to his left, and when he does I rugby-tackle him to the ground; amidst the chaos, teargas, and the sound of emphatic curses ringing through the grandiose rooms of the drug-lord's palatial compound, I make off into the sultry Colombian night – with the package and the briefcase full of cash under my Irish oxter.

Next thing I know, the alarm goes off. "What the fuck?” I grunt into the stack of pillows. It’s 16.40 in the afternoon already. Outside I hear the hens getting ready to go to sleep. It must be time to get up.

On the battered laptop, positioned on top of the only functioning table in my isolated abode, which is positioned strategically on a ridge over a bare-ass valley in the remote Colombian countryside, an email arrives from Hot Press, marked FUCKING URGENT.

And it opens with the immortal words. "Sam, you lazy fucking no-good swine, where are you, now that the world needs your words of wisdom?”

I am almost moved to tears, but I don’t want anything salty to get onto my bowl of cornflakes before I douse the lot in whiskey. After all, what I need more than anything right now is a good, tasty breakfast.

HOLY TRINITY

The email, addressed to The Rev. Samuel J. Snort III, explained that the editorial bigwigs at HP HQ wanted me to share my thoughts on something they called “this Co-ed-19 malarkey”. And then they added cryptically: “We need great men like you to step up to the plate, in this gravest of moments."

At least Co-ed is what I thought they called it. But after a little bit of research on WhatsApp, I knew differently. It seemed there was some sort of fuck-up in the transmission of video channels, and they’d given that very contemporary-style disaster the name Covid-19.

Elsewhere, however, I read that there was a sort of modern-day medieval plague by any other name in full swing to do with some malign coronavirus or other.

Things were clearly getting serious. Maybe after all, it was time for the great Samuel J. Snort to return to the battlefield. To dig out the ancient thesaurus and conjure some glorious prose into being. To show those pretentious whippersnappers just who was, after all, and remains King of the Word Processor.

“Who made the world?” Sam made the world! I liked the sound of it as an opening line already. But first a word from our sponsor.

CAN YOU PLEASE TRY AND SELL THIS SPACE, MOTHERFUCKERS. I NEED SOME EXTRA DOUGH FAST. THANK YOU...

Now, what I want to say about this new-fangled plague for a start, my friends, is that its arrival has put the fucking shits up me and no mistake. As a man who has spent more than his fair share of time in the company of Ted "The Fuckin' Nuge" Nugent (ask your great-grandparents), I've truly seen stuff to make a grown man weep. But this is an altogether new of order of disastrous, catastrophic, FUBAR – or whatever you muthas who spend your lives dreaming up a new acronym for every single item on the cosmic agenda wanna call it.

As a man of great faith, normally in such moments I turn to the holy trinity – that's music, dope and glorious poontang – to see me through, but with countless countries in meltdown as well as lockdown and most of us self-isolating like hermit crabs on particularly potent downers, even those sacramental rites have been denied us. So where to next?

See? Samuel J. Snort: the man who always asks the right questions. That’s me.

At the risk of repeating myself: where to next?

Well, without wishing to sound like a fucking hippie, it's time – to quote Macca – to come together. And by that I do not mean coming together in the sense I usually advocate, even for beginners. No, brothers and sisters of the Snortian revolution: like never before, we need to have each other's backs. And our fronts. We have to dig in, go the extra mile, and support our fellow man in whatever way we can. And woman too! We can’t ever forget the ladies. At least I can’t.

SPIRIT OF SNORT

Call it the Spirit of Snort 2020 if you will.

And trust me, when we come out the other side – and come out we will – I will be mounting the party to end all parties. Better still, I promise not to let Ted "The Fuckin' Nuge" Nugent next or near the place. And if he tries to crash it, we'll set the hounds loose on him.

As anyone who's ever attended a bash chez Snort will know: that means some seriously debauched shit. And I'm just talking about the invitations.

After that – at the party itself I mean – that’s when things will really kick off in earnest. In fact, I'm getting high 'n’ horny just thinking about it.

Meantime, take care, stay safe and – in the words of my good friend Snoop – just chill 'til the next episode.