What a carry on, councillor!
Town hall bigwig (and soccer mascot) wooed junior official with stream of saucy emails
WHEN divorced Darren Clifford met a younger woman through work, they embarked on a diverting dalliance.
The couple liked to meet at lunchtimes, after work and once a week they spent time together in office hours.
In between, Mr Clifford kept up an inventive stream of Carry On-style innuendo in their email messages.
But that was to prove their downfall. Because Mr Clifford, 47, is a senior councillor and his lover was a junior official at the same local authority.
What’s more, their risqué repartee was flying back and forth over the Labour-run council’s official email system.
Inevitably, someone found out. And now Lancaster City Council has held a disciplinary hearing in which the couple’s array of suggestive messages was laid bare before the standards committee.
In one, Mr Clifford – an elected Labour councillor and the cabinet member for leisure, culture and tourism – had joked about his lover being ‘punished’ while calling himself ‘very, very naughty’.
When she said he would get fed up with seeing her, he replied: ‘I won’t... I’m fed up of seeing you with your clothes on though’. The father of two, a former Territorial Army captain who served in Iraq, an exhospital matron and also a football fan who dressed up as Christie the Cat, mascot of Morecambe FC, has admitted misusing the email system, failing to disclose a relationship with an officer and ‘misuse of officer time’.
he accepted that the emails were ‘flirtatious’ with ‘sexual references and innuendos’ (see more examples on the right). But he says he and the official never had sex on council premises.
The standards committee was told the five-month relationship began last summer but is now over and the woman involved is no longer a council employee.
In one of their email exchanges, Mr Clifford, who is also the town council chairman in Morecambe, confessed that he’d been hurt in a previous relationship.
But when his girlfriend asked: ‘Shall we take this slower then?’ he replied: ‘The only time I want you telling me to take it slower is tomorrow night after everyone else has gone.’
When discussing the menu for a meal out, he asked about dessert and said he wanted ‘something sweet that will make my knees tremble’. he added: ‘Don’t mind sandwiching you, just depends where and when’. The woman replied: ‘now’.
In a signed statement to the committee, Mr Clifford said he ‘deeply regretted having done anything like this during work time’ and expressed his concern for the woman, who he said had been ‘hurt the most’.
As an elected councillor, Mr Clifford cannot be sacked. But he could be censured in a report to the full council, or the committee could recommend his removal from any or all committees. he could forfeit access to facilities such as computers, or be excluded from the offices except to attend meetings. Whatever the decision, there is no right of appeal.
Mr Clifford did not wish to comment on the disciplinary hearing and his former girlfriend declined to speak last night.
A relative of the councillor said he no longer lived at the family home in heysham, Lancashire. he has denied claims he has been staying overnight at the town hall. With the committee’s ruling due today, city council leader elaine Blamire commented: ‘It would be a shame if we had to lose him. he’s a very good cabinet member.’
But one source said: ‘While the emails read like the script of a Carry On film from the 1970s, Mr Clifford is in a serious job in charge of multi-million pound budgets and this woman was a junior employee. his conduct is completely unacceptable.’
‘We never had sex on council premises’