A curious alliance pushes Mellor close to 'meltdown': Michael Fathers looks ahead to an autumn full of obstacles for the Minister of Fun

THE 'Minister of Fun', David Mellor, had a busy day out yesterday. He saw Chelsea beaten at home, played to the crowd chanting his name, and then went on last night to the Royal Albert Hall for the end of the Proms. It might be his last official musical engagement, for this 'dedicated seeker after media exposure', as the Observer once called him, appears to be heading for the political twilight zone.

When the story of his affair with Antonia de Sancha broke, he offered to resign, but the Prime Minister persuaded him to stay. Mr Major was loyal to his friend, thought his private life was his own business, and was damned if the press was going to decide who should be in the Cabinet.

That was in July. The holidays have come and gone and Mr Mellor is still in the headlines and still having to tough it out. His relationship with Ms de Sancha has not gone away. Last week there were allegations - promptly denied - of his horizontal football with her in Chelsea kit. Then followed a report of a close association with a businessman.

This is bad enough almost two months on, but the next few weeks promise further humiliations. Both Mr Mellor and Mr Major must be wondering when the toughing can stop.

This week Mr Mellor faces fresh potential embarrassment, in court. He has been subpoenaed by Mirror Group Newspapers as a defence witness in a libel action, starting tomorrow, which could lead to further questions about his private life.

Mona Bauwens, 31, a friend of Mr Mellor and his wife Judith, is suing the People for defamation, alleging that the newspaper implied she was not the sort of person who should be mixing with a British government minister. Mrs Bauwens, whose father is chairman of the Palestine National Fund, a financial wing of the PLO, had entertained the Mellors at her villa in Marbella in 1990.

In early October Conservative Party conference takes place. Mr Mellor is usually a strong conference performer, but the tabloid press also relishes these occasions. Last Monday's revelations, it is reported, were originally intended for publication to coincide with the conference; something else may yet be dredged from the apparently bottomless well of de Sancha gossip.

It is notable that the most persistent pressure for Mr Mellor to resign has come from the Daily Mail, one of the papers most closely identified with rank-and- file Toryism.

'The case against David Mellor is not only that he has been unfaithful but also that he is a fool,' the paper said in a leading article on Wednesday. 'It is less a question of his morals than his judgement . . . he has rendered himself ridiculous and reduced those matters of national culture and heritage for which he is responsible to farce. . . .' Worse, he had upstaged the Prime Minister and 'made a pantomime of government'.

Heavy words for a popular Tory newspaper. The next day it gave details of his friendship with a wealthy property developer, Elliott Bernerd. Mr Bernerd had provided Mr Mellor with the flat where he met Ms de Sancha and loaned him a limousine with chauffeur during and after the elections. There was nothing improper in the link, but there was a lot of media exposure, and Mr Mellor didn't like it.

After the party conference, there is the return of Parliament, when Mr Mellor will be obliged to face his peers. Will his credibility survive the barracking he can expect from some of the accomplished hecklers on the opposition benches? According to Tony Banks, a member of the Labour front bench, Mr Mellor's indiscretion was not a resigning matter, nor was it a scandal in parliamentary terms. But the pressures on him from within his party were probably pushing him close to 'meltdown'.

Mr Banks said the de Sancha affair restricted Mr Mellor's political movement in the Commons: 'If David Mellor tries to cut up rough with anybody or gets pompous, he is dead in the water. He won't be able to get indignant or moralistic anymore.'

While a Tory backbencher said: 'The whips and central office can order people to come out for him but don't be in any doubt what the middle-aged lady at party conference thinks of him.' And further to emphasise Mr Mellor's political insecurity, he added: 'The question is: does he have political authority? For the next 10 years he is going to be a figure of ribaldry, and most backbenchers will just laugh at him.'

Beyond October, another time bomb is ticking away. Mr Mellor, it will be remembered, is the minister for the media. Once, famously, he said that the British press was 'drinking in the last- chance saloon', so flagrant had been its abuses of personal privacy. Although he is unenthusiastic about legislation to curb such abuses, the whole question lies in his department's remit. The question could not be more topical after a summer of revelations about the Royal Family.

Mr Mellor, now himself a target of similar intrusions, has already confronted the question of conflict of interest. It was shortly after he had first become aware of press knowledge of his relationship with Ms de Sancha that, in response to public outcry over the book about the Princess of Wales, he commissioned a further review of press conduct by Sir David Calcutt QC, just 18 months after Sir David recommended the establishment of a Press Complaints Commission.

Under present arrangements, he will present that report to Mr Mellor, and it will be Mr Mellor who will tell the Cabinet and the House of Commons what the next steps will be. This may be far in the future, but it is, by any measure, an extraordinary prospect.