Samuel J. Snort was flicking through a copy of NME [England] the other week, when a quote from his old buddy Keith Richards literally knocked the world’s greatest undying rock columnist to the floor (for obvious reasons – I was reading it in Eason’s).

It was just about to put it back on the rack when I saw the quote: asked for three things that he’d guarantee never to do again, Keef replied heroin, climbing coconut trees and – this was the bit that knocked me over – being trepanned.
Now, I should point out to less educated readers that trepanning isn’t the kind of strange but delicious sexual favour three experienced groupies might perform on a rock star of Keef’s renown. That’s called a three-in-one.
Anyway, I’ll let the bould Keef tell you exactly what trepanning is, in his own words...
“I wouldn’t want to do that again,” Keef said. “It’s having your fucking skull cut open. It’s what I had to go through. Yes, I’ve been trepanned. That’s quite an interesting experience, especially for my brain surgeon, who saw my thoughts flying around in my brain. I’ve got pictures of it. They cut my head, brain, skull open, went in and pulled out the crap, and put some of it back in again.”
While I am firmly of the view that Keef is a genius and a pioneer to boot, who is only a small bit behind Sam in the realm of rampant sexual excess and general rock ’n’ roll badness, I think I’ll pass on this particular experience. I’m with Tom Waits – I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.
It was only after I’d got it on with Rosita, my svelte Filipino maid, and the three friends she was having around for an early summer barbeque (this is called a four-in-one and not forepanning, as some people seem to think), that I remembered the thing about Keef mixing his late father’s ashes with cocaine and snorting them.
“He was cremated and I couldn’t resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow,” the world’s greatest rock guitarist had told reporter Mark Beaumont.

BOTTLE OF JACK
Needless to say that marvellous testimony to the essential meaninglessness of it all, from a certified rock ’n’ roll philosopher of the most profound and far reaching wisdom and erudition, has been making international headlines. However, the Strolling Bone’s publicists issued a statement on my old buddy Keef’s behalf (the exclamation marks are his).
“The complete story is lost in translation! The truth of the matter is that I planted a sturdy English Oak. I took the lid off the box of ashes and he is now growing oak trees and would love me for it!!! I was trying to say how tight Bert and I were. That tight!!! I wouldn’t take cocaine at this point in my life unless I wished to commit suicide.”
Keef, old man, you should have come to Sam if you wanted to put a fresh and convincing spin on denying a story like that. Like, “I’d just downed a complete bottle of Jack Daniel's before doing the interview. As a result the words came out in the wrong order. All you have to do to figure out what I really wanted to say is to get all of the words in the interview and re-arrange them. It might take a while – but hey, lots of dickheads sit around playing scrabble and sodoku, and how much less fun is that?”
The point is that – whatever about the ‘father-snorting’ thing – the part of the statement that refers to ‘suicide’ is obviously complete bullshit. Yes indeed. It’s long been known that Richards is the world’s most indestructible rock star. Scientific experts have predicted that, if there was ever a global nuclear holocaust, the only creatures left standing would be cockroaches – and Keef fucking Richards.

LIFE’S A BITCH, SNOOP
While Keef’s revelations may have shocked me, a recent Sindo report about Snoop Dogg’s antics brought a smile to my face.
The headline was ‘When a rapper invites you to party... he doesn’t just mean bubbly and a boogie’. While this is hardly a revelation to Sam who has been backstage with the homeys when the favours were being doled out. However, Sindo reporter Niamh Horan apparently wasn’t aware that when Snoop and his friends ask you backstage for a ‘party’, they’re not planning on shooting the breeze with you about the exorbitant Dublin rents and drinking cheapo plonk.
Apparently, Niamh and her friend enveigled Snoop’s entourage into granting them backstage access. Which is excellent work, when you think about it. Once they were there, though, things quickly got out of hand.
“What are you going to do to me?” Snoop allegedly asked her.
“Sorry?” she replied. “What do you mean?”
Snoop was a little put out by this, and said, “There are a lot of girls who wanna come to this party, you know. Now are you gonna get naked with me. Yes or no?”
Being a nice respectable Irish girl, Niamh had no plans to get naked with him at all. When she told him this, Snoop wasn’t impressed. “That shit ain’t game!” he shouted at one of his handlers, pointing at the hapless Horan. As she wrote in the Sindo, “[he was] obviously advising them not to bring me to the party because I wouldn’t put out.”
A little put out herself, Horan complained to a man claiming to be Snoop Dogg’s uncle about his nephew’s lack of respect towards Irish girls. The uncle was having none of it. “I told you,” he said, “you don’t want to party, don’t get on the bus!”
Horan duly went home and wrote a 1,000 word exposé. It ended with the paragraph: “Hindsight’s a wonderful thing. When these boys say party – they don’t mean jelly and ice cream.”
That media award is in the bag, Niamh. Well done!

PARDON MY SCEPTICISM
Before we go, though, let’s spare a thought for the late – actually very late – Jim Morrison. It’s been 38 years since Jimbo gave the audience at a Miami Doors show a very brief glimpse of his impressive, Sam Snort-like trouser python.
At the time (1969), this led to serious hassle, with the hopelessly neurotic Florida authorities deciding to press charges. Jim wound up being convicted, and sentenced to six months in jail on an indecent exposure charge. (They call that indecent exposure? Have they ever seen Michael McDowell sunbathing?) Needless to say, like Michael Stroke Fahy, Jimbo never actually served any time, but it still went on his record (that’s his police record, mind, not one of The Doors’ albums).
Now fans want the slate wiped clean. Apparently, they’ve requested that Florida Governor, Charlie Crist, extend Jim a posthumous pardon.
Somehow or other, I can’t imagine Jim getting down on his knees like this – well, only if there was a bevy of Swedish blondes involved. The Doors mainman was up there with Sam, always flying the flag.
And like Sam – and indeed Keef and Snoop – he was never interested in it being at half-mast.