A public relations expert was observed accompanying Portadown Orangemen into Castle Buildings, Stormont, on Tuesday, the day they met Tony Blair. It prompted another Orangeman to observe: "If anyone can make a good PR job of the Orange Order, then the world's his oyster."
This particular Orangeman was standing solidly alongside the Portadown brethren as they prepare for Drumcree mark V on July 4th. The march down Garvaghy Road is a question of civil liberties, he was certain.
Nationalists and others paraded for civil rights in the late 1960s, so why shouldn't Orangemen be all owed the civil right to march down a public highway, he argued. Equally, though, he was certain that selling a positive image of the order would be a challenge too far for most promotional people.
Many nationalists believe that the order's insistence in seeking to parade down Garvaghy Road is exactly the same as the Ku-Klux-Klan marching through a black neighbourhood in Alabama. It's not about civil rights or liberties, but about putting nationalists in their place - the old Croppies-lie-down routine.
There are two arguments here but for most Catholics, virtually every nationalist in Portadown and perhaps in Northern Ireland, for some Protestants, and generally internationally, the prevailing argument is that the Orangemen are bigoted, that they hate Catholics, the Pope, and everything which smacks of nationalism.
George Patton, secretary of the Orange Order of Ireland, says often it gets a bad and unfair press, "but I have to be perfectly honest and say that part of that is our own fault. We are not good at putting our own case and what the Orange institution stands for."
In a leaflet explaining the nature of the order, the word tolerance is used several times - but part of what the order stands for is combating Catholicism. New members must declare that they will "strenuously oppose the fatal errors and doctrines of the Church of Rome". This isn't tantamount to intolerance of Catholics, says Mr Patton. Orangemen may not marry Catholics but they should be civil to them.
"What comes after the part about opposing the fatal errors of the Church of Rome is the line, `ever abstaining from all uncharitable words, actions or sentiments towards all Roman Catholics'. While we don't agree with the Roman Catholic Church, we don't run Roman Catholics down, we treat them with respect," he adds. "Of course," he stresses, "as with any big organisation, you have people who don't always live up to those ideals."
There are many recent examples of some Orangemen's actions not cohering with Orange rules. In 1992, after the UDA murdered five Catholics in a bookmaker's on the Lower Ormeau Road, a number of Orangemen paraded past the same bookies and gave the five-fingers sign to protesting nationalists on the roadway.
It came across as some Orangemen celebrating the fact that five innocent people had been murdered. Such actions could not be defended but only a tiny number of those marching were involved and they were expelled from the order, Mr Patton says
More recently there were incipient moves to discipline David Trimble and the chairman of the Ulster Unionist Party, Denis Rogan, for attending a funeral Mass in Buncrana, Co Donegal, for three boys who were among the victims of last August's "Real IRA" bombing in Omagh, Co Tyrone. It was believed they were in breach of the rule that Orangemen "should not countenance by your presence or otherwise any act of ceremony of Popish worship".
Hardline Orange members were viewed as behind the moves but six months after the possible disciplinary action was first reported, the issue has, as one Orangeman says, "gone off the boil". This could reflect a growing realisation that it might be wiser not to play into the hands of those determined to paint the order as backward and bigoted.
There have been other examples of the order playing down the anti-Papist line. In April, Mr Trimble met the Pope in Rome with remarkably little outcry from members. Robert Saulters, grand master of the order - who, when appointed in December 1996, complained of Tony Blair being "disloyal" in marrying a Catholic - was totally sanguine. "It would be a terrible world if we couldn't meet whom we want to," says Mr Saulters, who now would be viewed as being on the moderate wing, despite his initial remarks about Cherie Blair.
Mr Patton says the order plans to promote itself better in future, but this is difficult against the background of Drumcree. He adds there will be greater efforts this year to ensure that any protests on Drumcree hill are peaceful. The order wants to detach itself from the hanger-on and paramilitary types intent on exploiting the protest. It is problematic, however, whether this will be possible.
There is one particular feature of the Drumcree dispute which sticks in the craw of even the most generously motivated nationalist. Several Orangemen during the Drumcree stand-offs of 1996 and 1997 appeared happy to have the Loyalist Volunteer Force leader Billy Wright join them on the hill.
Here was the leader of the organisation which had killed Catholics because they were Catholics, yet quite a number of Orangemen seemed more than content, and not at all embarrassed, in his company, a man whose organisation, before he was murdered by the INLA, murdered Michael McGoldrick, Sean Brown and Gerry Devlin. He defended loyalist massacres such as at Loughinisland and Greysteel. Previously, as a UVF leader in mid-Ulster, he was said to be responsible for numerous other sectarian killings.
For anyone to suggest that these Orangemen were unaware that Wright was a loyalist paramilitary would be the equivalent of nationalists trying to insist there is no linkage between Sinn Fein and the IRA. As nationalists saw it, several Orangemen could converse happily on the hill with a person who murdered Catholics but would not talk to Breandan Mac Cionnaith because he has an IRA conviction going back to 1982 for a firearm possession, false imprisonment and hijacking. For many nationalists and independent observers, that level of hypocrisy took the breath away.
That is the reason why, however much the Orange Order claims it is tolerant of Catholics, many nationalists believe at base level it really cannot abide them. Reasonable nationalists would acknowledge that the order has a point to make in its right-to-march argument, even if they disagree with the argument. Nationalists, though, just can't wear its argument that it won't talk to convicted terrorists when members at Drumcree did talk to Billy Wright. It would take some PR merchant to justify that position.