I understand that there is only one question on the lips of the nation this week and it is this: is it true that Sam Snort was found in a bathtub with a naked former government press secretary turned freelance PR chappy?
The answer, my friends, is yes , but needless to say there is more to the matter than first appearances might suggest.
Allow me to set the record straight: it is certainly the case that on a number of occasions in recent years your correspondent has found himself sharing a hot tub with the person I shall refer to only as Mr Dunlop . It is also true that I had in my hands a bar of coal tar soap and a loofah, with which I was vigorously rubbing down my companion, creating a fine bubbly lather all over his pale body before rinsing him clean with jets of scalding hot water and enfolding him in a fluffy white dressing gown. As you do.
While all of this undoubtedly took place, I hasten to add that nothing untoward was going on. Indeed, there is an absolutely straightforward explanation for the whole thing: Mr Dunlop had simply responded to an advertisement my company had placed in one of the trade magazines, an ad which promised a squeaky clean new start for anyone in the PR industry who was afraid their work might create a bit of a stink .
And the name of my sensitive and specialist service company?
Why, Do You Want Your Oul Lobbyist Washed Down?, of course.

Olive-skinned Babes
Now that we ve cleared that one up, I d like to tackle the allegation that my great self, Samuel J. Snort Esq, is the so-called senior, powerful figure who was in receipt of enormous sums of money to buy his vote on a matter of major public significance.
This frankly vicious innuendo refers, of course, to the controversy surrounding my presence on the Irish jury for the Eurovision Song Contest of 1973 and the fact that while Dublin gave douze points to Greece and null points to everyone else, this was reversed in the voting of every other single jury.
The matter might have been a one-night wonder were it not for the fact that a Sunday newspaper subsequently made the following allegations: that I appeared to be the beneficial owner of the Greek island of Samos; that crates of feta cheese and olives were continually being delivered to Snort Towers; that olive-skinned babes were also continually being delivered to Snort Towers; and that I was often to be found in my local pub attempting to pay for rounds of drink with drachmae.
Of course this was nothing other than a classic case of bad-minded reporters putting two and two together and getting five. And I said as much in a letter to the Athens News during the five years I subsequently spent in that part of the world investigating marine habitats in the Aegean.
Moving swiftly along, we come to what is perhaps the most damaging allegation levelled at Sam Snort since the lead singer of Grand Funk Railroad accused him of bogarting that joint backstage in Boise, Idaho in 1972.
This is the extraordinary situation whereby Samuel J. Snort, widely acknowledged to be the possessor of the biggest knob in Ireland, appears to have been the only adult male in the country not invited in for a shag by a woman I shall refer to only as Mrs Nevin . To have been so blithely overlooked by someone who appears to have laid everything except the carpets would be a cross too many to bear for any self-respecting red-blooded male, were it not for the fact that in the the case of the Snortian one it is simply not true: for the record, the woman I call Mrs Nevin did indeed ask me in to discuss Uganda but on the night in question I was unable to oblige since I was busy helping friends with names like Slab and Chucky to bury a horse in a field somewhere in the midlands.

PRODIGIOUS SCHLONG
Sadly time and space does not permit me to address in detail another bizarre rumour: this the one which, according to FBI documents, places a well-known rock journalist with either a gun in his pocket or a prodigious schlong on a grassy knoll in Dallas one fateful day in December of 1963.
A likely tale. Indeed, I m pretty sure that on the day in question I was in a pub in Dublin receiving a brown paper bag full of cash from a sweet-smelling lobbyist. But you can find out more about all this for yorselves by looking up the records in the Internet Cafe that is one of the many excellent attractions at the Snort Valley Shopping Centre, Theme Park and Omniplex on the site of the now demolished Home For Very Sad Orphans on the outskirts of Dublin.
Your ever-lovin Samuel J. Snort Esq.