Names can be powerful things, particularly today when almost no-one is beyond the reach of electronic media.

In these superficial times, your name can be one of the most important factors in determining what people think about you and, hence, your destiny.

It is worth bearing this in mind when contemplating the fate of Saadi Gaddafi.

Now in prison in his native Libya having recently been extradited from Niger where he took refuge following the overthrow of his father, Saadi, of course, bears one of the most notorious and evocative names of recent decades.

It is associated almost universally with a dictatorial tyrant who ruled his country for 42 years while tweaking the tails of the great powers and ultimately getting what many would see as his just desserts.

Saadi's life has been shaped exclusively by the solitary, inescapable fact that he is this man's son.

This fact once opened the door to a life of power and luxury and now to a prison cell, or worse.

Relationships between journalists and their contacts are often as superficial as anything else in this world of fleeting acquaintanceships, where interests intersect momentarily and then diverge.

But my acquaintanceship with Saadi – a former footballer, much as his efforts to forge a career in the sport in Italy have subsequently been ridiculed – has been less fleeting than those with most such "sources".

Saadi Gaddafi has led a life of luxury, but is now in jail in his homeland ©AFP/Getty Images



I met him in 2002, in a luxury hotel in Rome, where he had a signed, red Michael Owen Liverpool shirt carried out of a side room with utmost reverence, underlining just how besotted he was with the game.

I saw him again some two-and-a-half years later at his residence in Perugia, where he told me that the Libyans had considered buying shares in Manchester United and how he had told his father it would be "like buying the Church of England".

And I met him a third time in late-2006 in Paris, where he spelt out astoundingly ambitious plans to construct a mini-Hong Kong along a 40-kilometre stretch of desert and sea not far from the Tunisian border.

"We are talking about two systems and one country," he told me, sketching out how his imaginary enterprise city would offer low taxes, easy access, offshore banking and a liberal social regime.

"This is," he said, "a historical decision."

Then time, abruptly, ran out for his father the Colonel.

By the time I next spoke to Saadi, by telephone from Tripoli, the conflict that led to the regime's overthrow was raging.

I told him he should get out of there; he told me that his life was continuing much as normal and what he had had for lunch.

Forever in the shadow of his father, Saadi Gaddafi saw little reason to flee Libya amid a growing uprising ©AFP/Getty Images



Based on what adds up to several hours of interviews and conversation over around 10 years, I have reached a number of conclusions about the character of this man who used invariably to be referred to by his entourage as "the gentleman" or "the engineer".

He is a dreamer: in addition to the blueprint for that "semi-independent" enterprise city, we talked about another idea to secure Libya's food supplies through arrangements with less arid southern African countries.

There is quite a lot of the spoilt child about him: how could there not be given the lifestyle and circumstances he was born into?

He is football-mad: genuinely.

He was a loyal son: he would never criticise his father in my presence, and I think he obeyed him, although his frustration with some of Tripoli's old guard sometimes came to the surface.

He is not, insofar as I can judge, a bad or a violent man.

Saadi Gaddafi is, undoubtedly, football mad ©Bongarts/Getty Images



Yes, I suppose he could be said to have sponged off the Libyan people, along with the rest of his family, though Libya is not, when all is said and done, a particularly poor country.

And no, he was never going to be the type to rise up in rebellion against his father, though he was doing what he could to change the country for the better, as he saw it.

Given the choice, I am pretty sure he would head off to lead the sort of quiet life he would probably have had if his name had been Smith or Chang.

There were times even before the uprising when I felt that, for all the luxury, this is what he actually wanted to do.

And, as I fear for his future, I am sorry to say that this opportunity is always likely to be denied to him.