Forgive me for the personal nature of this question, but when you are enjoying an orgy with five prostitutes, do you tend to speak to them in German? Stuff like “Raus!” and “Hände hoch!”

Or maybe you can’t speak proper German and thus have to say things like: “For you, Ulrika, ze war ist over!” I just wondered.

This is the allegation that has been levelled at Max Mosley, the president of Formula One’s governing body, the FIA, an allegation to which he has taken grave exception. You will note that it is not the orgy allegation with which he contends, but the speaking German stuff. He insists that while he may have spoken in German to a couple of the young ladies, he did so because they were themselves German and it therefore seemed only polite, rather than because he was pretending to be Joachim von Ribbentrop or Julius Streicher.

It is useful these days in London to have a second and even third language for when the whores come round. However, if I were Max’s wife, Jean, this is the sort of nuanced detail I would be inclined to pass over, given the other business.

Or then again, maybe not, because Jean and Max met at a neo-Nazi British Union of Fascists (BUF) shindig back in 1960, apparently, so perhaps they speak to each other in clipped German tones while enjoying the act of love, too. People do very strange things behind closed doors.

I knew a woman once who continually yapped like a Yorkshire terrier during coitus. I myself have, on occasion, during lovemaking, engaged in what is known as “role playing” - pretending to be Mark Lawrenson, to enhance the thrill for both myself and my partner. Compared with this, the erotic Nazi business seems not half so weird, you might argue.

All of which, you might think, is a most unwelcome and unnecessary digression from the point - but it isn’t, it’s the whole point. Apparently some Jewish groups have complained that pretending to be a Nazi during lovemaking disqualifies Mosley from running the FIA; a columnist on this newspaper has said much the same thing, and now Mercedes-Benz and BMW have condemned Mosley.

Max believes that, given the history of these two firms, this is a little rich, and has said so. After all, both companies took their own Nazi impersonations even more seriously back in the 1930s. There is no suggestion, for example, that the boss of the FIA ever incorporated slave labour into his lovemaking rituals.

Despite this, others have followed the lead of BMW and bunged in their tuppence worth of condemnation, even the crown prince of Bahrain, Sheikh Salman Bin Hamad Al-Khalifa.

I am not sure why any of this should be causing such a stir. For a start, it seems to me precisely the sort of thing someone very senior in the motor racing world would get up to when he thought nobody was looking.

In any case, it is surely his business who he pretends to be when his trousers are down and the screen door has been closed.

Would the groups that complained have been happier if Mosley had pretended to be Golda Meir, or perhaps King David, complete with slingshot? Mosley, of course, has his name to contend with and his anti-Semitic and pro-fascist past; as a teenager he helped his lovely dad, Oswald, out at BUF meetings and so on, although by the 1980s he had migrated a few millimetres to the left and briefly attempted to carve out a career in the Conservative Party, as a potential MP, no less.

These days he is a Labour Party donor, I believe, so there seems to be no suggestion that he is still racist or fascist, except when the lights go out and those minxy Deutscher girls turn up in their lederhosen for a few hundred pounds an hour. It strikes me that while you might lodge a claim of inappropriate behaviour against a public figure for the act of hiring five whores, it seems a bit much to get offended about what he actually did when they turned up, it all being apparently consensual.

Privacy has become a rather degraded and devalued concept of late, and nobody seems to be sure where the boundaries lie. We can, however, surely agree that sexual fantasies, no matter how perverse or strange, are not something the public has a right to know about, and are still less a case for removal from office. Nobody, as far as we can tell, was hurt when Max, equipped with a whip, started howling about a Thousand-Year Reich, if indeed he did. I suspect that the administrators of all our sporting bodies take part in profoundly odd sexual activities; at the FA, it would not surprise me much if they used live chickens and sandpaper during lovemaking. Every corporate bureaucrat I have ever met has been sinister, devious and disingenuous - some of them likeably so, the rest otherwise - and one always suspected unsavoury shenanigans once that suit and tie had been put away for the evening. Sporting bureaucrats are usually the worst of the lot, but this sort of stuff is best left to our imagination.

Mosley has responded to the whole affair with a rather regrettable sanctimony, bordering on pomposity. This is an ill-advised pose to strike when the great British public has in its collective mind an image of you drawn from midway between The Night Porter and Sid James in Carry On, Himmler!

I suppose, however, that while being subjected to such excruciating embarrassment, it is difficult to know precisely what pose to strike. He has said that the Nazi stuff was pure fabrication on the part of journalists.

His mate, Bernie Ecclestone, has dismissed any idea of Mosley being antiSemitic and suggested that he was probably just “taking the piss”.

Deeply suspicious though I have always been of Mr Ecclestone, this seems to me exactly the right approach and one that I reckon would sit easily with most members of the public. It is not that they condone Mosley’s peccadilloes, it is that, rightly, they do not consider themselves in a position to condone or otherwise.

Those complaining most loudly about his alleged behaviour ought to worry that one day the bedroom door might be opened on their private passions.

How (not) to handle tabloid tales

THE NONDENIAL DENIAL

The allegation: shortly after joining Real Madrid in 2003, David Beckham embarked on an affair with Rebecca Loos, who had been employed by his management company to help him settle in to his new surroundings

The response: the Beckham PR machine dismissed the claim as ‘absurd’ and ‘unsubstantiated’, though not as ‘untrue’, and stated that they would be consulting their lawyers. No libel writ was ever issued but the lawyers pressured Sky not to air an interview with Loos. They were unsuccessful

What happened next: despite another allegation of infidelity being made against the footballer, the Beckhams’ marriage survived, as did the vast majority of his lucrative sponsorship contracts. His position as England captain was never queried

THE RETRACTION

The allegation: in 1999, Lawrence Dallaglio told a reporter that he had sold drugs and that he and two other Lions players had taken ecstasy in 1997

The response: Dallaglio said that ‘the circumstances in which the supposed admissions were obtained amounted to an elaborate set-up’ after being plied with champagne and retracted his boasts. He also offered to submit himself to blood and urine tests

What happened next: Dallaglio resigned the England captaincy. The RFU dropped the drugs charges, but fined him £15,000, plus costs

THE TABLOID DEAL THAT WENT WRONG

The allegation: in 2004, Football Association PA Faria Alam had an affair with Sven-Göran Eriksson, as well as FA chief executive Mark Palios

The response: the FA’s Colin Gibson told the News of the World that he would give it ‘chapter and verse’ on Alam and Sven if Palios was left out of its revelations

What happened next: the paper printed Gibson’s words. He resigned, as did Alam and Palios.

Eriksson kept his job, despite FA board members complaining that he had not been honest.

The Max Clifford verdict

When I represent sports stars, I tell them not to get so wound up by what’s been written. The public like a laugh about whatever pervy stuff they’ve got up to but all they really care about is what happens on the pitch. There are two options for Mosley now: come out fighting, or lie low and let the matter slip away. The problem with the second is that everyone will think he’s guilty. I have no idea whether he is guilty of the Nazi allegation but that’s his main problem. If he’s going to come out fighting he needs to have the personality to convince people that he’s not a villain and that he just made a mistake. People will much rather believe you than a journalist. The difficulty comes when you’re an arrogant so-and-so. Arrogant people aren’t very good at keeping their head down

Hiding to nothing

- What people do privately is up to them. I don’t honestly believe [the scandal] affects the sport in any way. Bernie Ecclestone, March 30

- There is absolutely no question that Mosley should resign. From a purely motor racing point of view you can’t have somebody like this running the sport. Jody Scheckter, April 1

- Under the current circumstances it would be inappropriate for [Mosley] to be in Bahrain at this time. Crown Prince of Bahrain, April 1

- The content of the publications is disgraceful. As a company, we strongly distance ourselves from it. This incident concerns Max Mosley both personally and as president of the FIA. Its consequences therefore extend far beyond the motorsport industry. BMW and Mercedes statement, April 3

- I was the victim of a disgusting conspiracy. it goes without saying that the Nazi element is pure fabrication. This will become clear when the matter comes to trial. Max Mosley, April 5.