FEELING LIKE A PROPER CHARLIE

These are difficult times for Samuel J. Snort Esq aka SJS aka The Gaffer.

No matter how much I protest to the contrary, I stand accused of riding high on the hog for too many years, of living way beyond my means and of trading glowing rock write-ups for favours unspecified but which, according to the ubiquitous dogs in the street, can be taken to mean ever more imaginative variations on the theme of oral relief.
Allow me, once and for all, to deal with each and every one of these malicious and frankly ludicrous accusations.
Firstly, the fact that I live in the 73-room Snort Towers, own a string of Arabian stallions, sail my own yacht (The Rip Snorter), own a small holiday island off continental Europe (Ireland), buy bespoke shirts in Paris, drink absolutely fucking gallons of strong French wine and entertain any number of olive-skinned beauties in my marble sunken bath, none of this ought in any way to mislead the public into thinking that I have ever earned more than the basic NUJ rate (plus standard expenses allowance) for a working reporter or done anything other than stump up my full P.A.Y.E whack same as all the other poor saps I see looking miserable at bus stops when I am driven by in my tinted-window limousine.
Needless to say, I have the documentation to prove that all my financial affairs are perfectly in order. Or rather my personal assistant has. Or rather had.
Primitive Tribe
Because the sad news is that my long-time right-hand man, Lance Turnpike, formerly lead singer with southern-fried boogiemeisters Foghat, recently fell out of a small plane that was flying over the Columbian jungle, taking with him all my personal papers which were, as ever, in a locked briefcase handcuffed to his wrist.
What a bummer, eh? Still, I live in hope that one day, perhaps even years from now, a pale-skinned, long-haired, bearded man will emerge naked from the South American jungle to tell an astonished world of how he was saved by a primitive tribe and kept alive for 25 years and how, now that his long exile is over, he s ready to unlock the contents of his briefcase and prove that, I, Samuel J. Snort Esq, always paid my tax.
Well, either that, of course, or ol Lance was flattened like a bug on impact and his remains eaten by crocodiles in which case, you re all just going to have to take my word for it, ain tcha?
The other persistent and most damaging allegation has been that, during certain difficult financial circumstances in the 70s, I adopted an unhelpful and even cavalier attitude to the banks.
First let me say that, even for a financial wizard like Sam Snort, shares much like my magnificent tool can go down as well as up. Unfortunately, there was a tricky period when, very much unlike my thrusting trouser snake, the Snortian stocks spent more time down than up, to the extent indeed that not even the fiscal equivalent of an intravenous shot of Viagra straight to the dick could have rescued my flagging, flaccid fortunes.
How did I get into this unhappy situation? I don t want to go into the details too much some of my business partners are, miraculously enough, still alive and not quite finished with their Anger Management courses but suffice to say that I may have been badly advised in investing the profits from a modest import/export business in such troubled start-up companies as the Hernandez Brothers Liquor Emporium in Salt Lake City, the Hernandez Brothers Live Sex Club in Vatican City and Molloy s The Traditional Irish Pub (props E.& C Hernandez) in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Actually, the Vatican Sex Club (Motto: Leave your collars at the door, fellas ) was going great guns but beyond in Kabul not even those silver-tongued South American lotharios Ernesto and Che could persuade the fucking Taliban that it was in their interests to trade some of that powerful Afghan dope for crates of stout, a variety of dusty bottles and archive black and white pics of oul Dubbalin wans in shawls. (The Taliban thoughts the shawls weren t long enough to be decent, apparently).
Anyway, to cut a long story short, nobody at all turned up for the opening night lig (apart from Jim Corr and Tony Fenton, of course) and the following morning the brothers Hernandez had to flee the place in a stolen crop-spraying plane, pursued by a big crowd of mad bearded lads waving copies of the Koran and firing off AK47s.
Rat-faced Fuck
The upshot of this debacle was that our tightly interconnected chain of businesses collapsed like a house of cards, leaving me in the frankly embarrassing situation of having to explain to my local bank in Swords how come I suddenly appeared to owe them #34 million.
The suggestion that I subsequently dodged them for the next 20 years until such time as the sum reached #127 million is patently not true. Here, as proof, I offer an example of the ongoing correspondence I had with them throughout that difficult time for us all.
Dear Mr. Bank Manager,
Fuck you you fucking fuck and fuck your mutha. I know where you live, you miserable little fart, and if you don t stop clogging up my letter box with your barely literate whinging, I will call around with my pals, the brothers Hernandez, and set fire to your Phil Collins CD collection you rat-faced little fuck.
PS Kindly extend my overdraft by another couple of mill. You pig.
Yours etc, Snort.
Now, all these years later, the Feds have decided to come the heavy and, with the backing of every court and tribunal that s ever been wet-dreamed of by a hardened lawyer, they ve declared that it s time for Sam Snort to finally answer some questions.
Well, y know, I d love to, but unfortunately , as my friend Dr Wilbur Feelgood will confirm, I have just come down with a most severe case of galloping knobrot. As a consequence, it s clear that nothing concerning my case could possibly stand up in court. Therefore I trust that I will hear no more about this whole, unsavoury affair.
Your ever-loving Samuel J. Snort esq.