The All Night Party might appear be struggling in the polls but you wouldn’t want to believe all you read. Reaction on the doorsteps continues to be positive, in the alleyways hugely supportive and in the bedrooms frankly orgasmic. As always, Sam’s hands-on, populist approach pays dividends, and his thankfully now healed broken bone remains, as they say, the only pole that counts.

So why the apparent gulf between happy reality and those negative newspaper headlines suggesting I may have problems recouping my deposit? The answer can be found in three little words: dirty fucking tricks.

Perfect Masculinity

So terrified are the mainstream politicos of the threat posed by Sam Snort’s All Night Party that they have blitzed the media with a series of lurid fictions designed to destroy my credibility and undermine my overwhelming popularity with the electorate.

First there was the sordid attempt to link me romantically with Ireland’s football manager Mick McCarthy. Short of accusing me of authoring a World Cup song, you could hardly lay a more damaging football-related slander at any man’s door. Unless, come to think of it, it was something to do with managing Longford Town, maybe.

But no, I can assure readers that my interest in the brawny, well-built, broad-shouldered, deep-voiced, teak-tough, brooding hunk of perfect masculinity that is the man I like to think of as ‘Very Big Mick’, is entirely concerned with his ability to, er, give a result, over, ah, six legs, playing, um, total offense – or whatever the fuck it is those guys in shorts do for hours at a time on the telly, boring all right-thinking people to tears when we’d all much rather be watching ‘World’s Scariest Police Chases’, ‘When Good Pets Go Bad’ or some other such useful public service broadcast.

Having failed to embroil me in a sex scandal – which, when you think about Sam Snort’s life, is rather like shooting at fish in a barrel and missing – The Feds next tried to pin on me the now notorious break-in at the hotpress offices on Trinity Street, during which lists containing the names and addresses of key figures in the Irish music industry went missing.

Dragged out of my waterbed at 6am and hauled in for questioning, I was treated to all the crudest tricks in the counter-intelligence book – white noise, sensory deprivation, the greatest hits of Westlife – before I was finally able to persuade these waterbrains that, far from being classified information, all the names in the “controversial” lists could be found in the latest edition of the hotpress Yearbook, along with details of venues, shops, media, artists and so much more. “It’s the veritable bible of the Irish music industry, y’know,” I told Inspector O’Hooligan, as he reluctantly put away his rubber truncheon.

Heavy Dossiers

Of course, I was at home barely two days before I was “lifted” again. This time our homegrown Feds were joined by some beshaded Yanks, anxious to find out what they seemed to think I might know about certain activities involving certain persons allegedly of my acquaintance, down Colombia way.

Well, needless to say, this had me sweating a little. As regular readers will know, Sam Snort’s crumpled white suit and Panama hat are a familiar sight in Bogota where, for many years, I have engaged in a little international trade with the grand old family import/export firm run by the brothers Hernandez, two men I am proud to call not just business partners but dear, dear friends.

Nevertheless, I was just about to hand over a couple of heavy dossiers on the boys to the Feds in exchange for my getting off scot free – this is called “cutting a deal” in these circles and is a very honourable way to behave, I can assure you – when it suddenly dawned on me that my interrogators weren’t asking any questions about marching powder, indoor Aspen ski-lifts, king-hell crank, white lightning, brown sugar, red lemonade (Sure about this one? – Ed) or any of the other matters on which I am an acknowledged authority.

Instead, they were talking about guns,

explosives, training camps and even, Jah forbid, South American politics, all subjects designed to send Sam Snort into a very deep trance, unless there is some crazy sex ‘n’ drugs angle I can get my teeth into. Happily, this time there wasn’t, which meant that I didn’t have to sell Fernando and Aldo down the river, something I really wouldn’t dream of doing unless my own ass was on the line. So with a cheery “Farc off” to the disgruntled Feds, it wasn’t long before I was back on my own campaign trail, pressing the flesh and even, occasionally, shaking someone’s hand.

So remember, come May 17th, there’s no other candidate fit to top the poll of…

Your ever lovin’ Samuel J. Snort Esq.