Morrison did not know about baby rumour 'for two days'

SINGER VAN Morrison did not find out for two days about the reports of the child he was alleged to have fathered, a friend of his said yesterday.

The information which the singer believes was put on his website by a hacker on December 28th was then disseminated by media around the world by the time Morrison and his wife Michelle (Rocca) Morrison found out about it.

The notice on his official website said that Morrison had a child, George Ivan Morrison III, who was the "spitting image of his daddy". The child's mother, Gigi Lee, was listed as the executive producer of Morrison's 2009 Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowlconcert DVD.

The couple were alerted to the rumours when their friend John Saunders, regional president of Fleishman-Hillard Europe, texted them out of concern on the night of December 29th. They texted back the following day with the words “what story?” Mr Saunders said his initial instincts were to respect their privacy, but he “smelt a rat” because he said it was totally out of character for Morrison to be so public about his private life.

“Van is very respectful towards Michelle. It would not be his style to publicly humiliate her like that. Whatever else one might say about him, the last thing he would want to do is to hurt her or his [two] children.”

Mr Saunders said the couple did not read newspapers and lived a very private existence at home in Dalkey.

For an international superstar, Morrison did not have a large entourage who might have told him, he added. “Van Morrison does not behave in the way that most other people behave and, though it might seem incredible to other people that he would not know, it is not all that surprising.”

The rumour was put on his website and appeared to confirmed by Phil Lobel, a Los Angeles-based publicist who claimed to be working for Morrison. Lobel lists George Michael, BB King and Sacha Baron Cohen among his clients.

When tracked down by Associated Press, Lobel admitted that he passed on the information because he had seen it on the website. AP, which prides itself on its accuracy, has disseminated a correction which has already appeared in 1,300 publications worldwide.

On New Year’s Eve, the normally reclusive Morrison issued a statement which stated that the rumours were “completely and utterly without foundation”.

“Once these claims were brought to our attention, they were taken down from the site but not before news organisations repeated these falsehoods. The comments which appeared on my website did not come from me.”

Morrison added that he was “very happily married” to Michelle Morrison with whom he has two children. He has also asked his management to find out who hacked into his website.