Well, if you're fighting to keep your billions and all that you know…

Saif Al Islam Gaddafi knows nothing except this: unlimited wealth and unrestricted power within the boundaries of his father’s immense kingdom.

At times, that power even extends beyond the kingdom, because his father’s influence, the influence of fear and of dark glamour, talks all the way to Europe and America.

He even managed to conquer the London School of Economics, and it’s having a bit of a hard time dealing with that now, and all the allegations that he bought his doctorate just as he bought his doctoral research and his thesis.

Gaddafi Junior was born into this and knows absolutely nothing else. So maybe that’s why he’s coming across now as somehow mentally deficient (that he’s morally deficient has been amply clear).

He doesn’t have the normal set of reactions that you would expect. He doesn’t know what is appropriate and what is not. A person might not have the normal reaction – for example, sorrow and regret at the deaths of hundreds – but at least he knows to fake it.

But Saif Al Islam not only fails to have the right reaction, he also fails to fake it. He doesn’t know that he has to at least pretend, or else he just doesn’t give a damn.

And that’s what has made him come across as totally weird in his last two television appearances, the first talking to CNN Turk and the other today, talking to an assembly of selected journalists trucked in for the occasion.

When addressing his father’s kingdom on state television, with that green map of the Mediterranean behind him, he wore a suit and tie. But when speaking to reporters on these most recent two occasions, he wore a jumper – even today, when the press conference set-up was try-hard professional, including proper mikes and a backdrop with “sponsors’ logos”.

But what got me – and probably everyone else, including the bewildered reporters – was the ‘out to lunch’ attitude. When talking to CNN Turk in a one-to-one, Saif Al Islam behaved like somebody talking to a junior reporter about some fun new project he’s got on the drawing-board.

“We will never let our people walk alone in this dark time,” he said, while bouncing about enthusiastically in front of a large map of the Mediterranean (though this time, not a green one). “We are united and we will get rid of those terrorists. Any media group can come in and see that what they are saying on television is lies.”

The reporter asked him whether the Gaddafis plan to leave the country. Saif Al Islam clearly had spent some time thinking about this one beforehand.

“We have Plan A, Plan B and Plan C,” he replied. “Plan A is to live and die in Libya. Plan B is to live and die in Libya. Plan C is to live and die in Libya.”

And then he grinned. That’s right. He grinned. Not a happy grin, but a ‘wasn’t I clever to say something like that’ grin. He fully expected the reporter to grin back.

Then this morning we had the whitewashing exercise. We knew the reporters would be trucked in because telephone reports had been coming out of Tripoli in the previous 24 hours, telling of bodies cleared up from the streets and morgues, and the wounded being ‘disappeared’ from hospitals by unknown men and not seen again.

Turns out Gaddafi’s ambassador here in Malta was very much on message when he met the press, talking about Al Qaeda and an Islamic Emirate and lies and that any reporter is welcome to visit and see how it is not true, even before Gaddafi and his son said the exact same things.

So Saif Al Islam stood before those reporters today and told them “Everything is calm. Tripoli is safe. Everything is peaceful. Everybody is happy. We have a minor problem in Misrata and Az-Zawiya, where there are some terrorists. But we are dealing with them. They are small numbers but they are there. Nobody wants to fight, but we have to.”

And later today there were reports of those two places coming under fire by Gaddafi’s forces.

“If you hear fireworks, don’t mistake it for shooting,” Saif Al Islam said. “Soon you will discover that what you heard about Libya is a joke, and you will see that here in Libya we are laughing. All that about the mercenaries….we are laughing at it.”

In separate news, residents reported that when men emerged from prayers at mosques all over Tripoli yesterday, and some began to gather in protest, government forces opened fire on them. “They just started shooting people,” one told The Guardian. And somebody else said from Az-Zawija, where ‘they have trouble with terrorists’: “There are corpses everywhere.”