Could the truth be somewhere in Vancouver?

As the FBI agent Dana Scully in The X-Files, the wildly successful television series with the paranormal twist, the actress Gillian Anderson is used to doing the sleuthing. Recently, however, she has been the object of intense investigation herself - by newspaper reporters, most of them British.

The newshounds have been encamped for two weeks in Vancouver, on the Canadian West Coast, where The X-Files is produced and where Ms Anderson, 28, has a home. The urgent question: who lives there with her?

It was the Sun that broke the news that the actress was no longer enjoying marital bliss, or marital anything apparently, with her husband of three years, Clyde Klotz.

The story had legs if only because the Klotz match had always seemed odd to X-philes. The pair married on impulse on a Hawaiian golf course with the help of a Buddhist priest. Not the kind of person favoured by the paparazzi, Mr Klotz, a film art director, was dismayingly normal. The couple had a baby girl, Piper.

Then, there came more - much more. Ms Anderson was alleged to have taken up with a 32-year-old Briton, Adrian Hughes. While still not quite extra- terrestrial, the plot got better still. Mr Hughes, a bit-part player in the series, was discovered to be facing charges involving alleged sexual assaults against three women. He will apparently face trial in April.

Any of the reporters worrying about tearing themselves away from the delights of Vancouver can console themselves with this: Mr Hughes' trial is only three months away.