I know Thai politics in the foreign media doubles as a comedy act, but when the Guardian announced the result of the last election under the headline ‘TV Chef becomes PM’, I thought things had gone too far.

Yes, Samak did a cooking show and yes, he had won the election.  But this headline was as misleading as a report of the executions of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette headlined ‘Shepherdess and husband guillotined’.  Or, given that both Churchill and Hitler were both artists manqués, describing the conduct of World War 2 as ‘Oil painters battle it out’.

How wrong I was.  Celebrity cooking was, in the end, the undoing of Samak (though in my humble opinion, anyone who pushes pork leg stewed in Coca-Cola deserves more than the sack).

Hauled before the courts on the charge that getting paid to stand in front of a wok and grumble was a violation of a constitutional ban on Prime Ministerial moonlighting, Samak’s legal defence was so limp that I hope his e-mail inbox is as full of Viagra ads as mine is..

First he claimed that he wasn’t an employee.  He just did work and was paid for it (though not by Coca-Cola, it seems).  So it would be alright for any private business to hire a PM, on a strictly freelance basis, to boost its image and hence its profits?

Well no, says Samak.  He wasn’t paid, exactly.  He was merely reimbursed travel expenses.

He got 80,000 baht for 4 shows.  Now I don’t know exactly how far Samak had to travel to the studio, and we all know that pump prices are a bit fierce these days, but 20,000 baht a trip?  He could get to Singapore and back for that, let alone across town.

In a final bid to establish both his probity and generosity, Samak claimed he hadn’t taken the money anyway.  So he hadn’t been paid?  No, he had been paid, but he’d given the money to his driver. 

And the dog ate the receipts, yeronner.

Samak assumed that the courts needed nothing more than his protestations of his own moral virtue.  He failed to muster even a passing resemblance to a coherent defence.  And he apparently believed that he could tell as many whoppers in court as he did in his CNN and Al-Jazeera interviews, and get away with it.

This is a rather robust level of contempt for the rule of law.

He is in good company. 

Khunying Potjaman Shinawatra, currently on the lam after failing to turn up to one trial, is in fact a convicted criminal in another case and free only on appeal.  She was found guilty on 31 July by the Criminal Court of tax evasion on a share transfer to her brother.  Her claim was that this was a gift and therefore tax-free.

What is often forgotten about this case is that the runaway Khunying was in act found guilty on two charges.  Besides tax-dodging, she and her brother and her secretary were also found guilty of supplying false information.

One piece of this false information was a cheque, supposedly paid to one of those exceptionally well-heeled Shinawatra domestics, who was alleged to be the original owner of the shares.  This was claimed to represent Khunying Potjaman’s purchase of the shares, which she then gave away in a fit a sisterly generosity to her brother.

The only problem was that this cheque ended up being paid into one of Khunying Potjaman’s own bank accounts.  The maid earned nothing from the transaction.

Now come on.  Which scenario do you find most likely?

The maid decided to make a gift of millions to her already rich employer?  Or perhaps was in debt to her for millions?  So she settles by handing back the cheque.  Except if you’ve just been given your own cheque back because, for some far-fetched reason, you no longer need to pay, don’t you just rip it up?

Or was this handing over the cheque similar to the handing over of the Shin Corp shares to other Shinawatra employees when Thaksin was accused of concealing his assets?  A way of, er, keeping them safe.  From scrutiny and other things.  The conclusion being that although the maid may once have had the cheque in her hand, she was never really the true owner of the money? 

Then there are the stories about a document presented to the court referring to the Khunying as Khunying, but dated years before she was actually made a Khunying.

Look, if you and I, as financial non-experts, can smell something fishy, how did the Khunying and her legal wizards expect the courts not to be suspicious? 

There is much misinformed and malicious talk from our self-appointed betters these days denigrating the great unwashed rural voter as gullible, venal and eminently corruptible.  This flies in the face of much recent research on what motivates voters in rural constituencies in their choice of candidate.

But it seems on a par with the contempt in which the elite hold the courts.