Sending variable from php to flash without printing var in php!

This is going to sound like a really stupid query, but I'm totally new to this. I can grab the contents of a single variable from a php page and display it in a field in Flash, which works great. I do this using the echo command and placing an & before the variable to be sent.

e.g. echo "&textData=$contentSenttoFlash";

When I embed the flash movie into the php page though, the echo command also prints that variable to the screen, so that it appears both in the flash movie (which I want), and again as a text string on the page (which I don't want). Is there any way to prevent the php printing the variable as well whilst using this method?

I've actually just tried a crude solution by using a <div style="display:none;"> to hide the output of the echo statement! Doesn't seem very elegant, but it does work.