Imagine Sam’s shock when he turned on the news to learn that his old buddy Phil ‘Wall Of Sound’ Spector had been arrested and charged with, as you young people say, popping a cap in a youngish lady’s ass.

Jah on a moped! A top showbiz person being led away by the Feds, on prime time television, accused of something other than paedophilia? How shocking is that? Why, if it wasn’t so ugly it would be almost…refreshing.

So let’s roll this out and see what we make of it: a big house, a smoking gun, Phil Spector and a deceased B-movie actress called Lana…on the face of it, I don’t think we need to bother Lieutenant Columbo with this one.

Then again, who knows? I mean, how many bucks did you have on OJ?

Inflatable man

In his first interview in nearly a quarter of a century, published recently in the Daily Telegraph, the man Tom Wolfe dubbed ‘The Tycoon Of Teen’ confessed: “I have a bipolar personality… I am my own worst enemy.” Fair enough to a point, though poor Lana Clarkson might disagree with the conclusion.

Still, there’s no doubting that Phil was onto something here - after all this is a man who was famously prone to waving firearms about in the studio and who used to be so jealous of his then wife Ronnie Spector that he forced her to drive around with an inflatable man in the passenger seat, so other guys wouldn’t try to hit on her.

And now this mad genius of pop is staring at the possibility of a life behind a bigger and more formidable wall than he ever managed to create in the studio..

Jeez, it certainly hasn’t been a good week for the business they call show, what with Courtney Love accused of going off her (drinks) trolley eight miles high and Michael Jackson blowing the perfect opportunity to develop a nice new media image by appearing totally himself on primetime.

If only his people had contacted my people, this terrible mess could have been prevented. “Honesty is not always the best policy, Micko, me boy,” I would have counseled His Noselessness, “and, indeed, in your case, honesty would be pretty much indistinguishable from a noose around your neck and a preacher reading the last rites.”

Aware of the trap that lay in store, I actually rushed an urgent memo through to Neverland which spelled out in dramatic bullet-point the only possible way Micko might save (what’s left of his) face. I would like to reprint here, some of the salient points:

“It is imperative that Micko talks about cars, beer and gaelic football so the world can see how much of a boy next door he really is…

“Under no circumstances should Micko open an umbrella unless it is pissing rain…
“Micko should change the sign above the entrance gate from ‘Neverland’ to ‘Beaverland’. Shoot all the fucking emu or whatever it is he has in there and ask Mort at the Mayfair Theatre in ‘Frisco to send over some of his wild women instead. Don’t worry, they’ll bring their own cages…

“It is absolutely imperative that, in any shots of Micko’s master bedroom, pages from this year’s Pirelli calendar should be visible on the wall. We can always put back the Barney the Dinosaur posters after the camera crew has left…

“Suggested answer for Micko, if the hack asks him out straight about the shape of his nose: ‘Cosmetic surgery? No way. I can only put down the abject state of my nasal cavities to the frankly massive quantities of coke and speed I do every day. Hey, want some?’”

Noseless wonder

And finally, when he is forced to view the ostensibly damning evidence of the footage showing him dangling a toddler from a hotel balcony, Micko should arrange his features (difficult, I know) into a picture of astonishment and say, “Jeez, I was so out of it on skunkweed at the time - I thought that was a television”.

Sadly, Micko’s people never showed him my memo or an emu ate it or some fucking thing, because it was clear from the interview that Micko hadn’t taken on board its most urgent piece of advice: “At no point should the noseless wonder make any reference whatsoever to kids, kiddies, kids’ stuff or even F.A.O fuckin’ Schwarz for that matter: in the interests of sympathetic publicity, it would better if he were to whip out a gun and shoot the interviewer dead.”

Your ever lovin’ Samuel J. Snort Esq