Being branded a "huge hook nose" is no laughing matter. Let me remind one and all of the worldwide saying about hook-nosed Hebrews undergoing nose bobs. The plastic surgery result is a thing of beauty - and a goy forever.

Of course, I'm not suggesting here in any way Heather Reisman has, in my expert opinion, a hook nose or a huge nose of any kind. Heather Reisman has a great face and a modest nose. Heather Reisman is a sweet and cheerful person and should be entirely free from nasal distortions by wicked caricaturists like Tony Jenkins.

That ruffian has not only dwelt in his cartoons on my large proboscis but also on my ample posterior, now gone, alas, through the miracle of rigid dieting. In his cartoons of me, Jenkins also likes to sprinkle blackheads, warts and blemishes of all kinds all over my fat face.

I have been cartoonized by all the great cartoonists of this country. All are curmudgeons or rascals, none the slightest bit racist. The legendary Toronto Star cartoonist Duncan Macpherson, loved to use me and my fat Jewish nose as small cameo characters in his political cartoons. In these cameos, I was always a dishevelled wretch or urchin, a media reprobate forever cadging free meals at Ottawa functions or sulking in a corner as a picket during a postal strike.

Jenkins, Macpherson and Terry Mosher, better known as Aislin, all had a field day at my alleged running for a seat in the Senate. In all their cartoons, I was a frothing, fat-nosed windbag, sucking in huge gobs of air.

At Winston's, Toronto's most exclusive power eatery, the late Duncan Macpherson, Terry Mosher and myself would arrive for a late meal and some double scotches. Being troublemakers we were at once banished to the basement of the restaurant.

There the dark and dangerous Macpherson suggested we should order his favourite dish, pheasant under glass. Aislin and I promptly did so. We noticed Duncan's occasional trips to the kitchen to see how our pheasants were doing.

It seemed like only hours before a beaming Macpherson, chafing dishes and pheasants in tow, approached our table. Once again, donning his famous sardonic smile, Macpherson asked the two of us, now excruciatingly hungry, if we would like to smell the pheasants.

Mosher declined. I, loving to put my schnozz to use always, agreed to smell the pheasants. Duncan had to lift off the tops of the chafing dishes to leave room for my schnozz to get in and smell.

The aroma was magnificent. I told Duncan that. Duncan, still smiling sardonically, said, "I don't agree." Duncan then picked up the chafing dishes with the pheasants still in them and hurled them all through the closest Winston's window.

I tell this sad tale only to indicate the madness, dyspepsia and sheer willfulness that afflicts the cartoonist in Canada. Canadian cartoonists are a dangerous species, hopefully at the brink of extinction. On Heather Reisman's behalf, I hope they will all go away very soon.

I have never sued anyone for libel because frankly I can't afford to do so. If I sued for libel every time a cartoonist drew me with a very large Jewish nose, I would have even less money than I have now - and no cartoonist friends at all. What's worse, the interior decorating of my humble abode would take a severe beating.

On the wall in the living room is a huge Macpherson cartoon of a crazed, fat-nosed Zolf with a butterfly net, chasing British bureaucrats in Westminster in a frenzied search for the new Canadian Constitution. Ed Franklin, a Globe cartoonist who dealt primarily in huge noses, has my large Jewish nose peeking through the immigration gates of Canada. A Globe magazine cover story called "Behind Larry Zolf's Nose" shows me with a huge Jewish nose holding a false nose and glasses in my hand.

Aislin has me with a large, fat nose with a small wart in the middle of it. These nose caricatures of mine are among my most prized possessions. Some of my best friends are cartoonists.

I, of course, am the inventor of this famed riposte to all those like myself who have suffered from a false nose and glasses abomination. I have said publicly that I am the proud possessor of a magical false nose and glasses, magical in that the glasses come off but the nose doesn't.

Still, all bravado aside, and despite my love of caricaturists, I can agree that the ridicule of the Jewish nose sometimes does have a soupcon or soup can of anti-Semitism clattering away in the background. The huge Jewish nose was the staple of the Nazi hate propaganda in the 1930s.

In the late 1940s, I was often escorted to junior high school by adult Anglos chanting:

"Oh ye sons of Moses Lift up your Crooked noses Fight, fight, fight For Palestine."

But even worse was the ridicule doled out by my fellow Jewish boys and girls, all with button noses and gorgeous Heather Reisman faces. Often they would say to each other in front of me: "What do you get when you pour boiling water on Larry Zolf's nose?" "Boiled bananas," they all chirped in. No wonder I don't attend high school reunions.

Still, having a big fat Jewish nose does have its advantages. Television producers are always eager for you to interview Nazis, neo Nazis, and anti-Semites, for you provide them with the needed balance, toughness and objectivity. People sometimes wonder why you're at the office Christmas party – and given the bores present, you wonder, too. If sniffing dogs can't find a hidden narcotic cache, your fat nose often can.

Sometimes I despair and wish I was born as beautiful as Heather Reisman. But then as a button nose, I would be confined to telling button nose jokes. As Cyrano de Bergerac would put it: a button nose cannot launch a thousand ships.

Nor will anyone ever ask a button nose: "Why do the Jews have big fat noses?" The answer is: "Because the air is free!"