THE novel will never be the same again. Fay Weldon, author of such classic woman-power tracts as the Lives And Loves Of A She-Devil, has really gone and done it this time.

Fay has never been one to shy away from controversy. She is, after all, the former feminist who has repeatedly attacked women for belittling men, and who once caused a media storm by saying 'rape is not the worst thing that can happen to a woman'.

But accepting money from an Italian jewellery company to mention its products in her latest novel? You can just hear the literary world drawing a collective, shuddering breath of horror. Either that, or laughing out loud and rubbing its hands in glee.

Her new book, The Bulgari Connection, may be the first novel to have gone down the road of 'product placement' - but you can bet your bottom dollar it won't be the last.

It surely won't be long before Jilly Cooper is being offered a fortune by Country Casuals to plug their clothes - and who would bet against Harry Potter author JK Rowling being offered a quid or two to slip in a few quiet trips to the local McDonalds for her young magician and his friends?

Product placement is common in the film world. A strategically-placed Pepsi bottle, over which the camera lingers just that little bit longer than it needs to, can be worth a mint, as any film producer worth his salt has known for years.

But that's film.

Novels are different, because they are art.

PR guru Mark Borkowski has already sounded a word of warning to young writers.

"I would always say to any young artist tempted: you have only got your credibility," he told a national newspaper.

"One wrong move and you can destroy something that you have spent years building up."

Sensitive souls, writers, obviously. Because product placement doesn't seem to have done the credibility of movie moguls much harm - though it's doubtful the same can be said for the quality of the films they produce.

Fay Weldon, in typical forthright style, appears unfazed by the fuss. "When the approach came through I thought, oh no, dear me, I am a literary author.

"You can't do this kind of thing; my name will be mud forever," she is reported to have told the New York Times. "But after a while I thought, I don't care. Let it be mud. They never give me the Booker prize anyway."

Her agent Giles Gordon, needless to say, is delighted. "The door is open and now the sky is the limit," he told a national paper. "I've suggested that in her next book she includes a whole string of top companies, Disney, Levis, McDonalds, the lot, and we write to them and say 'Ms Weldon is including a mention of your fine company in her next book, what do you reckon?'"

The only thing that surprises me is that it has taken advertisers so long to cotton on to the possibilities.

But now the door has been opened, I think it's time to seize the main chance. After all, if it's worth a company paying a novelist to plug its products, why not a journalist as well? You can zip through a news story in a squillionth the time it takes to read a whole book.

Just imagine it. "An elegant red Fiat Punto, with central locking, power steering and passenger airbags fitted as standard, was today in collision with a cow on the A64..."

Offers, anyone?