I play tennis and write while in jail says Max Clifford
Sex attacker is inmates’ equality rep
MaX clifford yesterday compared jail to being ‘buried alive’ – despite revealing he is enjoying playing tennis and writing a book behind bars.
Protesting his innocence, the disgraced former public relations guru said he has ‘lost everything’ since being sentenced in 2014 to eight years for sex crimes.
now aged 73, he is also spending his time behind bars teaching and acting as an equalities rep for inmates.
clifford described his life in prison as he gave evidence in his defence while facing trial over a new allegation.
He is accused of exposing himself to a teenager when he ambushed her inside his Mayfair office in the early 1980s.
But speaking at Southwark crown court, he said the supposed ‘victim’ was lying and only interested in his money.
clifford, who boasts of helping to launch The Beatles, said he was ‘disgusted’ by the allegations made against him in court two years ago and has instructed his legal team on an appeal.
Wearing a smart navy suit and tie, he said: ‘I was found guilty... I know I’m innocent. Hopefully one day I will be able to prove that.
‘I know I was not guilty. one of the things I have learned is you’re guilty until you’re proven innocent when sexual offences are involved.’
Describing his life in prison, clifford said it was a ‘serious shock to the system’, adding: ‘now you’ve lost your freedom you have lost everything.
‘I can only compare it to being buried alive,’ he said. ‘Having had a very successful living, I have lost everything’. clifford said he is now representing other inmates who fall victim to racism or discrimination at littlehey Prison, near Huntingdon in cambridgeshire.
‘at littlehey Prison, I teach in education, I play tennis, I’m writing another book – all of these things,’ he said.
‘The emphasis at the prison is rehabilitation. I’m an equalities rep, if anyone has any racial issues or gender issues, I help them out.’
ahead of his latest trial, clifford was transferred to Wandsworth Prison where he said he has been kept in his cell for ‘23-and-a-half hours a day’.
He said he had been forced to scrub excrement from the walls of his cell. He told jurors: ‘It’s a simple cell – no communications, no TVs, radio, it doesn’t even have a kettle. When I arrived, the walls were covered in excrement.’ open- ing the defence case, his Qc Sarah Forshaw admitted the ‘odds are stacked against’ her client.
She claimed clifford was convicted at the ‘height of the operation Yewtree hysteria’ and that he would never ‘win a popularity con- test’. She said: ‘I’m not blind to the fact that we face an absolute uphill struggle. That has to be the understatement of the year. The cards were stacked against Max clifford from before his trial.’
The alleged victim in the latest trial claims she was sexually assaulted by clifford when she was 17-years- old some time between october 1981 and May 1982.
The jury have heard him accused of locking the door to his office, which was often strewn with graphic sexual photographs, before the attack.
In the witness box, clifford said his office was often visited by aspiring models and pop stars who would be sexually interested in him ‘even if I looked like the Hunchback of notre Dame’.
He admitted he was not always faithful to his late wife of four decades, liz, but insisted he loved her. ‘I had affairs, I’m not proud of it,’ he said. ‘But they went on for years. I have written all about this in my book ten years ago,’ he said.
clifford said he had ‘three main affairs’ over 15 years and in 1981 was seeing a French model, adding: ‘In terms of passion and sex, I was getting plenty.’
The former Pr man said he thought the alleged victim’s reason for going to the police was for money and that he had faced up to ten claims of compensation.
asked about ‘kiss-and-tell stories’ about him since his conviction, he replied: ‘You must remember, I don’t get newspapers – I’m in prison.’
clifford, formerly of Hersham in Surrey, denies indecent assault. The trial continues.
‘I had affairs, I’m not proud of it’