Carole's other man

Ian Monk is a good person to advise Carole Caplin on dealing with newspapers. He has worked on several of them

Throughout the extended testing of Cherie Blair's integrity, a solitary figure has flitted behind the scenes, linking the participants but never seeking the limelight. Who was it that warned Alastair Campbell of impending strife three days before The Mail on Sunday scooped every competitor? Who "advised and assisted" Carole Caplin and, through her, persuaded Peter Foster not to demand the money and run? Who handled the revelation that Mr Foster would make his statement "clarifying all issues" through the neutral agency of the Press Association?

Step forward, Ian Monk, managing director of MacLaurin Media, who is now emerging as the poor man's Max Clifford. Campbell had his doubts about Caplin (and may wish he had voiced them with greater force), but Monk eschewed such judgemental hostility. He was there when Cherie's friend needed him, and he is there still. Judged by results, Monk seems a winner. If only Mrs Blair had trusted him, instead of handing the No 10 press office a deficient brief.

Monk's principal asset is that he knows everyone. His Achilles heel is that everyone knows him. As a working journalist, he served the Daily Star and Daily Mail before moving on to a post as deputy editor of the The Express.

It was at The Express, in 1996, that Monk acquired two pre-publication copies of Allan Starkie's biography of the Duchess of York. Nothing surprising about that: newspapers routinely catch early sight of such things so that they can decide whether to bid for serialisation rights. On that occasion, someone seems to have had a brighter idea. Monk's wife, Anita, was arrested at Heathrow airport with one of the books in her possession. In the subsequent trial, she acknowledged that she had agreed to sell it to The Sun.

Monk left The Express "by mutual agreement". He moved briefly to The Sun, but the lure and lucre of PR was powerful. He did not stay long before taking up his position at the MacLaurin agency. From that vantage-point, he has been able to renew his links with the Daily Express under the ownership of Richard Desmond. Many veterans of the old Express have found it too hard to work with the creator of Asian Babes. But Monk is broad-minded and appears untroubled by Desmond's links with pornography. He is Desmond's PR guru.

The arrangement is not exclusive. Monk and MacLaurin used to provide a similar service to Andrew Neil, publisher of The Scotsman. Last Thursday, Neil's Edinburgh broadsheet surprised Britain by revealing that legal documents relating to Foster's deportation had been faxed to Cherie Blair's private apartment at No 10. But Neil says he has not spoken to Monk for 18 months.

There would be no point. Monk is emphatic about the nature of his role in the tale of Cherie's flats. Last week, he said: "We want to make clear that we are not hawking Peter Foster's story around, and that our advice through Caplin to Foster is that, if you sell the story, the consequences will be 10 times worse than for Paul Burrell."

Neither Monk nor Brian MacLaurin, chairman of the media agency (and an old friend of Andrew Neil), is employed to represent Peter Foster. Their guidance to the convicted con man has been filtered through Caplin.

Despite the air of sleaze surrounding the affair, the ever-tolerant Monk is clearly enjoying himself. Last year, he faced the anger and resentment of his former colleagues because of another of his clients, the pop star Michael Jackson. Unkind words were spoken by the journalists kept loitering in lashing rain outside the Oxford Union as they awaited Jackson's fashionably late arrival. Cheriegate must be more fun.