The authors report the case of a patient with alcoholic cirrhosis in whom the appearance of a hepatocarcinoma coincided with the appearance of an "asymptomatic" monoclonal gammaglobulinopathy and hypercalcaemia attributed to a probable paraneoplastic syndrome. The authors discuss the hypotheses which have been proposed to explain the link between monoclonal gammaglobulinopathy and cancer and they stress the particular case of hepatocarcinoma in which the association has been rarely reported. They also review the diagnostic criteria of paraneoplastic hypercalcaemia.