Just to be 100% certain, however, after I hung up, I checked both my computer and my Blackberry to make sure that there was nothing on either device that could be construed as even vaguely incriminating. Also checked the vault where I keep my stash of DVDs, and was pleased to find that all 23 discs were still there.

I also made a few phone calls around ministerial circles to see if anyone could verify the identities of the persons featured in the actual set of videos. The most enthusiastic response came from Mariano Browne, who provided an unsolicited blow-by-blow account of two of the films and invited me to an after-work screening of the entire series that he was hosting in the Ministry of Trade and Industry conference room. When I told him that I did not consider this to be an appropriate use of government premises he told me I could stick Gary Hunt’s $2m flagpole up where the sun don’t shine, or something to that effect. It’s a real shame Mariano knows some of the things he knows, or I’d have fired him on the spot.

The most disturbing aspect of the situation, however, is the manner in which I’m hearing this horrific breach of privacy took place. If it is true that the person featured in the videos sent his/her computer to a certain enterprise on Mucurapo Road for repairs, and if an employee of said company copied the videos, then I’m hoping the computer’s owner is going to slap a big lawsuit on the company and initiate a boycott of its services. Nor is a certain computer giant in Cupertino, California going to be happy to hear that its T&T reseller is at the centre of such a scandal.

While I am always careful either to erase from my hard drive or to copy to DVD most content I believe could be potentially incriminating (including any document containing the keywords “calder” and “hart”), at any given time, my GMail account harbours hundreds of harmless e-mails containing information of a sensitive nature, including messages where I respond “LOL” to comments about Colm Imbert and Gary Hunt’s Napoleon complexes, Jack Warner’s speech impediment or anything involving Panday.

It gives me chills to think that some idle geek in a computer company could copy these things and spread them around, thereby damaging the good relationships I enjoy with all of these people.

Keith Rowley: Dr. Evil (used without the permission of the Trinidad Guardian)

The outpouring of public support in the wake of my unveiling, last week, of Rowley’s bullying ways, has been truly heartwarming. It appears that I am not the only person on whose a** the man has got medieval over the years, and the votes of confidence have far outweighed attempts by the COP, Ramjack and others to paint me as a macommere man.

Rowley, it has been revealed, was a scourge even within my own cabinet. Colm Imbert recounted tearfully how he was forced to undergo painful surgery to repair damage sustained to his coccyx due to the wedgies the bald-headed scoundrel inflicted repeatedly upon him in the men’s room during cabinet meeting breaks.

Female cabinet ministers, including Karen Nunez-Tesheira, Marlene McDonald and my own wife Hazel, shared almost identical stories about Rowley cornering them and invading their personal space on the pretext of engaging them in conversation about government matters, only to discover their nether regions brightly reflected in the man’s preternaturally shiny shoes.

I also had a phone call from the tea lady at the Red House, who says she caught Rowley on more than one occasion attempting to lace the tea-time pone–my sweet of choice, as my readers know–with potent laxatives.

Even more telling was the testimony from the sister isle, where the depraved individual was born and spent his formative years. Statements from fellow schoolmates tell the story of a long history of torment at the hands of the young Rowley, whose list of transgressions include:

• theft of pocket money during recess
• pulling down of fellow students’ pants/lifting of fellow students’ skirts
• pinching and ear-twisting
• disrupting jump rope sessions and games of moral, hopscotch and elastic, also clapping games
• rigging of egg-and-spoon and sack races at sports day
• upsetting a bran tub at a church harvest when the tub didn’t yield a toy that was to his liking
• breaking up a game of musical chairs and attacking the person operating the gramophone for stopping the music at the wrong time
• pinning the tail on the birthday boy, instead of the donkey
• giving ultra-hard bokees during marbles matches
• cutting the flesh of fellow students with zwills
• inflicting third-degree burns on fellow students with donkey eyes
• slicing of other people’s kite strings with razor blades and ground glass
• staining of fellow students clothing with chennette and pommerac juice
• singing obscene lyrics at a schools’ speech band competition
• praedial larceny
• theft of coral from Buccoo Reef
• bribing of a referee during the 1973 Intercol season
• spearheading the great pacro water scam of ‘74

And those are just the ones I can print without being charged with libel, or, as Rowley would probably consider it, reputation enhancement.