As measured by column inches, the kerfuffle around the Silverwater silvertail challenges that of Lindy Chamberlain. Indeed, we seem burdened by a southern hemispherical equivalent to the OTT O. J. Simpson case. One more image of R. R., in or out of prison, would have been intolerable. Indeed, one more image in or out of R. R. – even one obtained from a camera attached to an anal probe – and I'd have screamed. As would, one suspects, Rivkin.

Why this insane emphasis on this inane man? But I forget. He is, after all, the Nelson Mandela of Double Bay. That being the case, why not lock him up on Robben Island for 30 years, not just a few hours each weekend at Silverwater?

Rivkin supporters, including the woman who proclaimed her love in the heavens in wisps of smoke extruded from the bum of a light aircraft, tell us that he was guilty of a very, very small crime. He did, after all, get away with just $350 as a result of his mendacity. This is like arguing that a murderer should serve time according to the height of his victim. "He was only 129cm, Your Honour," says the expensive barrister. "So surely Your Honour would not propose a custodial sentence? Had the deceased been over 188cm, one might expect a few years but . . ."

Couldn't you argue the opposite in Rivkin's case? Not only was he an inside trader but he proved, beyond reasonable doubt, that he was an inept inside trader. Double the sentence, say I. But I've worked out a far, far better way of punishing R. R. than the gibbet. There is one thing Rivkin would find unendurable, a torture beyond bearing – to be utterly ignored.

Don't mention him. Take not the slightest interest in him. Here's a guy who devours publicity more ravenously than Prozac, whose love of self-aggrandisement is not only written in the clouds but rises to the stratospheric, the cosmic.

Let's simply pretend he isn't there. That he doesn't matter. Which, God knows, is the truth. Apart from anything else, whether or not he's a crook, he's a sook. He's approached by a couple of screws in rubber gloves who wish to conduct a cavity search and he promptly falls off a stool in a swoon. Think about it, dear reader. If you or I were to fall off our stool in a swoon every time a prison warder approaches us tugging on talcum'd gloves, we'd never get anything done. You've just got to cope with these minor distractions and get on with your life.

A while ago I found myself at Hayman Island with the Rivkins. Legendarily litigious (R. R. guarantees the affluence of at least half of Sydney's silks), he had been in the throes of defamation litigation in which he claimed that newspaper publisher John Fairfax had wrongly associated him with a mysterious death at the Gap linked to a personal assistant and with a fire in a building insured for $50 million. I asked him how he was coping with it all. He told me he was handling it quite well. "But only by taking vast amounts of Prozac," interrupted his wife, "which is changing his personality."

Resisting the temptation to say this could only be for the better I decided, then and there, that I would never write about Rivkin or even mention his name in a column. And I am determined to honour that firm resolve. Otherwise, I might add to the media firestorm that swirls around him. When, of course, that space in the press, that time on the telly and most significantly that chair beside Rivkin's personal publicist Andrew Denton should be filled by others far worthier.

Like an adulterous footballer or an anorexic supermodel or Kylie Minogue's bottom. Things that really, truly matter in our society.

Whereas, of course, R. R. is of no more consequence than a bonnet ornament on, yes, an R-R. Or in Rivkin's case, on his $800,000 Bentley.