My mother once had a cat that frequently fell out of trees, and was so embarrassed by the event that it would run madly around the garden to divert attention from what it had just done.

Presidents do Big Presidential Stuff in time of personal crisis, but it amounts to the same thing and so it happened that Mr Clinton had an appointment in Moscow he had to go to, and others in Belfast and Limerick.

But the American media remained more or less transfixed by the tree incident.

'After the break...'

In fact there has been a veritable cacophony of stories available to American news editors, which President Clinton could have hoped would divert attention from his, er, impropriety with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.

First of all there was a 500 point collapse at the New York stock exchange; then another crash - of a Swissair flight off the Atlantic coast.

Then there was the race between two baseball players to break the sacred home-run record set in 1961.

All of those stories were covered on American television, but "after the break_the President's visit to Moscow is overshadowed by [our] questions about the Lewinsky scandal".

Favourite soap

The media has unflagging interest in the Lewinsky scandal

The fact that the Leader Of The Free World was in Russia as the economy there began to go into free fall, and the government did the same, was merely a side-bar to the Bill and Monica show.

It was like watching your favourite soap opera, in one of those episodes where key members of the cast go on holiday.

The Russian media seemed to look at President Clinton and ask - "what's HE doing here?", and unfortunately for Mr Clinton, so did the American media.

Time magazine had a cartoon on its cover of the two Presidents supporting each other with the help of crutches.

Lame duck

Most pundits here had decided in advance that he could achieve little in Moscow, and their expectations were met.

A president in the back half of his last term is usually thought to be something of a lame duck, but Mr Clinton is now having to battle the perception that he is a duck on a life-support system.

What's more, the cleaner has arrived and is looking for a socket to plug in the hoover.

So, the president must now gear up for what will probably be the most important political battle of his presidency.

He is an accomplished political fighter, and has been in tough scrapes before. But not like this one. Kenneth Starr's report is expected to contain - at the very least - humiliating details about his sex life, and at worst, evidence that he lied under oath.