Sam Snort would like to take this opportunity to set the record straight about my recently published and enormously controversial autobiography, 48 Lines Of King-hell Crank, 20 Blotter Sheets, Willy-withering Amounts of Poontang and A Glass Of Buckfast Tonic Wine with Sam Snort.

Before anyone else asks me if it’s true that I live on a farm with no hot and cold running poontang or if it’s true that I once tried to steal George Harrison’s missus and sell her to Eric Clapton or if it’s true that I have often been hurled out of transatlantic jets at 30,000 feet... the answer is no, no, no, not one fucking word of it is true.

“But how can that be, oh great one,” I hear you ask, “seeing as how you yourself have just described the book as an autobiography?”

The answer is very simple, my little pointy-headed friends: 48 Lines Of King-hell Crank... is that unprecedented thing – the world’s first unauthorised autobiography.

A tricky concept to get a handle on, agreed, but the nub of the thing, basically, is that I never knowingly commissioned myself to write the book. Rather, in the course of numerous drunken stupors, powerful acid trips and sundry other out of body experiences, I simply wrote the stuff as though possessed by some other-worldly force. That’s what I actually said in the preface to the book: that I felt as those I’d hit on some kind of “strange automatic writing in which the unseen hand was the one moving the pen.”

Complete Bolloxology

As it happens, this is a perfect example of the complete bolloxology I’m talking about, because, needless to say, I was just as out of my gourd writing the preface as I was writing every other part of the book – and that includes the ostensibly heartfelt acknowledgements section in the course of which I appear to give the impression that I’m an admirer of BP fucking Fallon, for fuck’s sake. Hell, if the falling out of an aeroplane riff didn’t set the bullshit antennae a-quiver, then surely to jaysus that did.

No, the truth is that the unseen hand was only unseen because I like to write in the dark and always wear shades: as for automatic writing, I gave that up for good when I quit sports journalism; and, regarding the idea of being in the grip of some higher power, higher Powers would be more accurate, along with JD, Wild Turkey, absinthe and whatever restorative powders and potions my researcher (and freshly-buttered Filipino houseboy) Raul had prepared for the evening’s exertions.

Because once we had the exertions out of the way, I always insisted on doing a bit of work on the book. I am, after all, a professional.

Sadly, the cumulative results of these many long-lost weekends (and weekdays, to be fair), is that I now find myself in the position of having to promote a book which I would sooner burn.

To make matters worse, 48 Lines Of King-Hell Crank... has been rapturously recieved by the critics. “A book with one of the longest titles ever,” rhapsodised The Sunday Times. “A book by rock critic Sam Snort,” salivated The Irish Times. “A book,” drooled Germaine Greer on Late Review. (And that’s not the first time old Ger has drooled in the company of the Snortian one, if you get my drift).

Radio hasn’t been too far behind in following up the story. Just yesterday, for example, I recieved a phone call from LMFM wondering if I could get them out of a tight spot: seems they’d had to cancel their obituary slot on account of no-one dying in the region last week, and they hoped I could do a phoner on the book to take them up to the news and weather.

Cognisant of the massive audience that would be listening, I was all set to denounce ever word, letter and punctuation mark in the book when word came through at the 11th hour that I was being ditched in favour of a “world exclusive” interview with a human cannonball called Padraig from Carlingford.

Sexual Gratification

Sadly, the situation is now so grave that there is only one option left open to me: I will have to take myself to court. Apparently, the act of sueing oneself is largely unheard of but then, as my solicitor Ozzie Killiney pointed out, so is the notion of an unauthorised autobiography. It was a persuasive argument and I told him to set everything up. However, when Ozzie attempted to hang up he inadvertently put me on hold with the result that I could hear him guffawing loudly and ordering a new top of the range car on the other line.

It doesn’t matter: there’s an important principle at stake here. Those of us in the public eye already suffer enoough at the hands of the yellow, running-dog press without making matters worse by casually defaming ourselves and holding our reputations up to ridicule in the eyes of all right-thinking people.

It’s time for Sam Snort to get back in the driving seat. I didn’t get where I am today by delegating responsibility, except, of course, to my faithful servant Raul, who is in charge of my day to day diary, medication, journalistic commissions, personal finance, personal hygiene, toilet habits and sexual gratification.

In all other ways the buck – and, yea, even the Buckfast – stops with Samuel J. Snort Esq. So if anyone is going to get to the bottom of this mess and emerge with the pristine, unvarnished truth, there is only one journalist in Ireland with the iron balls for to the job.

And that’s Fintan O’Toole, the bollocks.

Your ever-lovin’ Samuel J. Snort Esq