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Every so often, the tabloid media's desperate desire to see a positive male influence enter troubled pop star Britney Spears' turbulent life gets the better of it (after all, gossip-sheet editors want nothing but her happiness), an overzealousness that results in stories of romantic attachments to any nearby Superman who might swoop down from the clouds and halt the runaway train of her post-Federline existence moments before it hurtles off a cliff. People corrects the record on recent reports that Spears and paparazzi deflector/infant deceleration specialist Daimon Shippen are, to use the parlance of our celebrity-obsessed times, "totally doing it."

"He's her bodyguard and manny," says a source familiar with Shippen's employment. "They're not dating."

Shippen, a California native described by the source as "funny, but on the quiet side," is "tickled" by the attention from the media. "But he really wants to focus on his job: taking care of the kids and of her," says the source.

Shippen, the source confirms, was indeed the mustachioed security guard who helped catch Spears's son Sean Preston when the singer stumbled in New York in May 2006. At the time, Shippen was working for a security firm.

Shippen and the company parted ways soon after, but Spears recently rehired Shippen - now clean-shaven - independent of an agency. In recent days he has escorted her to a production of Wicked and to church, carrying a crying Jayden. He also has been spotted with Spears at a Beverly Hills hotel where she has been staying recently.

It's not hard to see how the media might have believed that Spears and the manny's relationship evolved from a professional to a carnal one, for there is no moment more erotically charged than that first time a harried mom and the help's eyes meet in the instant he has saved her fumbled baby from an unscheduled playdate with a hot sidewalk, as the flash of paparazzi flashbulbs inevitably heighten an already heady experience.