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While most celebrity media outlets were happy to concoct (and we to obligingly regurgitate) everything they needed to know about Britney Spears' new, mysterious male companion by merely staring at paparazzi photographs of the two and letting the romantic narrative in their heads take over ("He's pushing a stroller—he's her nanny! And he's cute! He's her Hunky Poppins man-lover!"), the tireless investigators at TMZ.com have actually done some legwork on the matter by locating and contacting the boy's mother, who was happy to clear up any fanciful misconceptions about her son:

Britney's hitherto mysterious companion is Perry Taylor, a 28-year-old Naval Academy graduate who played on Navy's lacrosse team and who grew up and went to high school in the Washington, D.C., area.

What's more, quelling rumors that Perry may be taking the place of K-Fed, Perry's mom, Caroline, tells TMZ her son is living with a six-foot brunette (she's Perry's height) and that she's been his girlfriend for two years. Perry's mom calls the girlfriend "a bombshell" and coos she's "the best girl he's ever been with. They're really happy."[...]

And if there was any question about whether he was helping out with the Sean Preston diaper detail, his mother told TMZ that the answer's pretty clear: "He's just beginning to learn about babies," she says, adding that not too long ago he asked a friend of his how old babies have to be before they open their eyes.

We're relieved that Perry's backstory is all cleared up, but we won't start feeling too badly for celebrity gossip rags, who are at this very moment scheming in editorial conference rooms about how to weave this new information into a more plausible narrative about how Spears' unavailable bodyguard dropped everything to break up her unhappy marriage and fill the male-role-model-shaped hole in her children's lives.