Typical. Sam takes his annual fortnight’s leave (of his senses) and the minute his back is turned the whole country goes to the dogs.

Up north, the orange and green tribes are so congenitally incapable of getting their collective act together long enough even to organise a basic train service, that once more they find their ass having to be whipped into shape by Johnny Brit, while down south the piss-up-in-a-brewery deficit is so endemic that our national football team is riven by internal dissent and can’t even keep a bunch of high altitude clock-makers at bay.

And as if all that wasn’t bad enough, Sam returns to find that the Irish Times is suddenly being edited by a chick.

Transgender operation

Already, we see the terrible consequences of this decision. I refer to the august Letters Page of that organ whose myriad contents invariably begin with a deferential “Sir”. (Except, of course, when they begin with “A Chara” but then those letters are always by some dingbat called Leabhreas and concern his unwillingness, on a point of principle, to pay the television license fee. Subsequently, the author makes it into the news section of the same paper, with a nice photo of him raising a clenched fist and with his fly wide open, as he’s led from the courts to begin his twenty-third 14 day stretch in Sing Sing).

However, I digress. Now, as a result of what can only be described as a misguided genuflection before the altar of political correctness, “Sir” has been changed to “Madam”, in one of the more shocking transgender operations in the history of the popular prints.

And the result? Instead of making the IT seem right-on, cutting edge and certifiably post-millennial, it merely renders it so archaic that you half expect the letter beneath to call for the repeal of the corn laws or (this being the Irish Times after all) demand that the ladies too be given the vote.

Lest anyone get the wrong impression, can I make it clear at this point that I am all in favour of equal opportunites for everyone - and that means chicks, guys, gays, straights, blacks, whites, travellers, settled dudes and, hell yes, even fucking culchies, within reason. Certainly, no-one could ever accuse Sam Snort of being hard on babes, as distinct from being hard in babes, which is pretty much a permanent condition for the great one. No indeed, Sam is all in favour of chicks taking their rightful place in the marketplace, whether as back up singers in rock bands, secretaries in record companies or hostesses in night clubs. Really, the opportunities are endless.

But, frankly, it baffles Sam how a towering media institution like the Irish Times could install this fragrant lady in the hot seat when there was at least one other contestant for the gig whose credentials were so overwhelmingly persuasive and incontrovertible, that he’d already taken the liberty of printing up a lovely new business card featuring the familiar logo of a beshaded skull smoking a cheroot and the accompanying legend, “Samuel J. Snort Esq: Brain Chemist, Rock Viber, Spiritual Healer, Sex Therapist and Editor of the Irish Times”.

And it’s not as if my vision for the Times under Sam contained anything too radical or that was likely to give the Old Lady of D’Olier Street’s bloomers an embarrassing yank. (Or a “George Bush”, in the vernacular).

Wordy Bollox

All I envisioned were just a few cosmetic changes including – less wordy bollox and more big pictures; a health warning in bold caps at the start of every Kevin Myers’ column; a miniature cut-out-and-keep beard to help readers keep pace with John Waters’ changing appearance; an expanded Correction and Clarification box big enough to contain everything Vincent Browne might have to say about anything at any time; the lovely ecumenical column ‘Rite and Reason’ to be “rested” and replaced by Roger Mellie’s Profanisaurus following a reciprocal arrangement with Viz (they get Breda O’ Brien, plus the Saturday magazine); replacement of the property section with a free music cd; and, last but not least, the hiring of Eoghan Harris, whose loin-bursting desire to get into bed with the Old Lady is so touchingly expressed in his obsessional criticism of her in the Sunday Saddo.

All of this would be sold to a baying public via a tasteful new tv ad campaign in which a punter in a lap—dance club is seen fanning himself with a rolled up copy of the IT before a sultry chick approaches him, looks directly at his crotch and remarks in a heavy East European accent: “Is that Fintan O’ Toole or are you just happy to see me?” As she suddenly grabs him by the tie and pulls him towards her, we fade to black to the sound of Bob Dylan singing ‘Oh, the Times they are a-changing’.

Yes, indeed. They shoulda gone for Sam, the one man in Irish journalism who knows what it takes to increase the circulation of a really big organ.

An’ ah thank the ladeez know jest what ahm a-talkin’ ‘bout.

Your ever lovin’ Samuel J. Snort Esq