Within hours of the 'announcement' hitting the wires, Van Morrison's press agents were denying the reports, and quickly traced the reports to his own website, which had been hacked over the Christmas period.
Unconfirmed reports suggest that an SQL injection attack on the site - the second in three months - was to blame for the rogue story.
Breaking off from what he described as "a quiet family Christmas," the singer said that, once the claims to were brought to his attention they were taken down from the site "but not before news organisations repeated these falsehoods."
"For the avoidance of all doubt and in the interests of clarity, I am very happily married to Michelle Morrison with whom I have two wonderful children", the 64-year-old rock star added.
John Saunders, a Dublin-based public relations executive, and a friend of the family, told RTE Radio in Ireland over the weekend that Morrison had been dismayed by the claims.
"He's never heard the name at any stage in the past. He doesn't know who this person is", he said, adding that breaking off from the carols and mince pies to quash the reports was proof of how they had irritated the intensely private musician.
"Van is a mystery man in many ways. Of all the things that Van does do with a great deal of genius, the one thing he probably would admit himself is that he doesn't do particularly well at public relations."