Fact is Safer Than Fiction

Kafka worked in insurance but should have been a lawyer. He would have loved a world in which a man called Michael Fawcett can persuade the courts to make him "Mr X" and in which a royal flunkey takes to the nation's airwaves to assure the public there is no truth in a rumour that the heir to the throne did things he is unfortunately unable to refer to at this point.

If, as Sir Michael Peat suggests, the web-spread rumour about the Prince of Wales is "risible" and without foundation, then an obvious strategy for Clarence House would be to release the details and trust the public to enjoy their preposterousness. The prince's reputation would surely rise as his mother's subjects understood that there really can sometimes be smoke without fire.

Let's take an imagined scenario which - to avoid the duty judge being disturbed at his weekend retreat - is intended to be so obviously impossible that even a dog would doubt it. A disgruntled employee at 10 Downing Street tells a friend they once witnessed Tony and Cherie Blair taking part in human sacrifices, watched by the crew of a Venusian UFO whose existence the British government has deliberately kept from the public. Inevitably in the post-Microsoft universe, this hybrid sci-fi/horror-movie rumour breeds like rats on Viagra.

Soon newspapers are referring to an "astonishing allegation" about the private life of the Blairs, while the riskier disc jockeys make oblique references to The Exorcist and columnists sardonically ask whether the PM relaxes by watching The X-Files.

In such circumstances, would the No 10 press secretary seek time on a BBC news bulletin to say the rumours people might be hearing about what the Blairs did on the lawn at Chequers were self-evidently ridiculous and should be ignored?

The obvious risk of this approach is that everyone who had ever heard any story at all about the political power couple would assume that the spin-doctor was referring to that whisper, which - given the history of government officials denying stories which were later proved - could now almost certainly be taken as true.

Therefore, the premier's aide would almost certainly say: "Look, if anyone out there is stupid enough to think that Tony and Cherie really did cavort naked under an inverted crucifix in the Buckinghamshire countryside while little green men looked on, then, frankly, we can do without their support. The prime minister is a well-known, red-blooded Anglo-Catholic. How could any sensible person possibly think he would attend a black mass?"

The Sir Michael Peat school of public relations would doubtless argue that details have to be withheld because of the risk of the "facts" becoming detached from their scoffing context. The initial headlines might say: PM Laughs Off Extra-Terrestrial Satanist Claims. But, two years down the line at the ballot box, a voter might vaguely think: "Hang on, wasn't there all that stuff about a black mass with Martians at Chequers?"

It's true that defamation law and injunctions are partly intended to prevent that notorious newspaper opportunism in which - again inventing a scenario which even an amoeba could see through - Sven-Goran Eriksson is asked at a press conference if it's true that he's a transvestite purely in order to create the back-page splash: I'm No Cross-Dresser, Insists Sven.

The prince's difficulty is that, in the modern media world, both silence and denial are taken as likely admissions of guilt. But Sir Michael's halfway palace - the silent denial - is a rackety and ridiculous edifice that will surely soon be knocked over by a flick from a newspaper.

The real problem is that the "Venusian Satanist" strategy outlined above would be a risk for the royal family. Following the learned works of Morton and Burrell, there is probably almost no scenario involving a senior male royal that would not leave some readers thinking: so that's what floats his boat.

Even so, if the Charles yarn is the one that has dropped into my gossip in-tray, then I question the claims in some newspapers that, if printed and if proved, it would "threaten the very future of the monarchy".

Those who wanted Charles to be king would ignore the scuttlebutt - which involves an act unprovable at this distance - while republicans or Williamites would believe it.

What Buckingham Palace and Clarence House need to consider is how we have reached a stage in which what they insist is truly bonkers gossip can achieve wide credence. Can that scepticism be blamed entirely on the media and the internet? With both his silence and his denials regarded as suspicious, the Prince of Wales is, in effect, screwed both ways.