Here at The Spray we have global reach.

We can take any sports person on the planet and pluck them out of the headlines half a world away, download them into our hard drive and computer-generate them before putting them under the media microscope.

So will you please welcome to the hitting plate, the greatest American baseball slugger ever … our own virtual Barry Bonds.

The real Bazza, who plays for the San Francisco Giants, has set tongues wagging, not just because he knocked the 33-year-old home run hitting record of Hank Aaron’s 755 flyers out of the ball park, but because of his interesting choice of body rubs.

Some unkind, envious types are suggesting his creams of choice have done more than just make him very hairy chested.

Here is an edited version of an interview we did online with Barry’s cyber simulation – an athletic avatar, if you like – shortly before it struck out at a grand jury.

The Virtual Spray: “Welcome, Barry, from your many fans in Australia. Tell us, are you any relation to one of our most famous Aussie icons, Chesty Bonds?”

Robo Barry: “What sort of cheap shot is that you @#$%ˆ& lowlife %&*)%$!”

TVS: “Barry, please, get a grip. Owww! I didn’t mean that sort of grip. I think you’ve broken my virtual arm!”

RB: “I’m sorry man, I just get @#$ˆ&%@ edgy around you reporter @#$%&*. You guys are always badmouthing me, saying stuff in the paper that makes me want to empty my Uzi into your maggoty @$%%ˆ&* bodies!”

TVS: “While I wait for the plaster to set on my radius bone and I get a new cassette recorder to replace the one you just crushed in your unnaturally large hands, tell me, do you have an anger management problem?

“I take it by that vein pulsating wildly in the side of your head that’s the size of a boa constrictor, that’s a yes.

“Barry! Barry! Put the baseball bat down, right now! Say, is that guy in a white lab coat over there with the specimen jar looking for you? Just kidding … I had you going there for a minute.

“Look settle down and let’s start again, will we? At age 34, you were a great baseball player but no Babe Ruth.

“Then your personal trainer Greg Anderson, who can’t be with us today because he’s in jail, starts giving you special rubs and whammo!

“In the space of a year, at an age when most guys your age are swilling Buds from the bleachers, you go from a hitter who creams a home run every 16 bats, to an unheard-of home-run hitter every 8.9 bats! How do you do that?”

RB: “What can I $%ˆ&*#$% say? I know how to connect. Listen #$%%ˆ&*##$, are you accusing me of #@$%ˆ@#& something? It’s like I told the Heat, man, a guy gets a late growth spurt and everyone’s on his #$%ˆ&*(@ case! It makes me so @#$%ˆ&* wild!" (Sound of furniture and cyber bone fragments splintering.)

TVS: “Yow! You sure know how to swing a bat to hurt a guy. I think my skull’s fractured, but while we wait for the X-rays to confirm that, tell me, what did you do to go from looking like Eddie Murphy to Godzilla? I read somewhere where you grew three shoe sizes and a second neck aged 35.”

RB: “@$%ˆ&* hard work, man! You know, I had a lot of spare time on my hands waiting for my liver transplant in the off-season. So while the other turkeys were #$%ˆ&* goofing off, I just pumped?”

TVS: “Iron?”

RB: “Every @#$%ˆ&* thing my trainer gave me, right into the system … not that I knew what it was.”

TVS: “Barry, what are you going to do after you quit baseball or it quits you?”

RB: “Probably the Tour de France. Watch out Lance $%ˆ&*#$ Armstrong lovers, I’m coming to get you…you @$%ˆ&%.”

(Sound of explosion)

TVS: “Oh dear, I think Barry’s enhanced brain just exploded. Worst case of simulated blood pressure I’ve ever seen.”