The PR wizard who was the poacher and gamekeeper of Fleet Street

MAX Clifford was the PR guru whose fall from grace was chronicled with the sort of front-page publicity he toiled to earn – and similarly avoid – for his celebrity clients, writes Ryan Hooper.

The shamed publicity puppet-master had crafted a reputation for garnering maximum exposure for the famehungry wannabes in his charge, while maximising his extensive Fleet Street contacts to help keep other clients off the front pages when needed.

His CV – much of which he regaled in subsequent court cases as well as his autobiography Read All About It – boasted an impressive roster of onetime clients.

He had helped launch the career of The Beatles by sending press releases about their debut single Love Me Do when record company bosses were ambivalent about the four-piece.

He counted Muhammad Ali, Frank Sinatra and Chelsea Football Club as clients at the height of his career.

And his work was immortalised when a tabloid newspaper published the front-page headline Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster – a story the publicist later admitted was a fabrication. But as Clifford passed his half-century in the showbiz industry, allegations began to emerge that would later dismantle his considerable empire.

When the tables turned, with Clifford becoming the story, he found himself on the receiving end of untruths – about the size of his penis (in court being settled by a doctor as “average”).

In his 2014 trial he would eventually be convicted of eight counts.

Born on April 6, 1943, in Surrey, the youngest of four children, Clifford said he grew up in relative poverty, his father being a milkman and a gambler, while his mother took in lodgers for extra cash.

He left school at 15 with no qualifications and trained as a journalist after he was sacked from his first job as an assistant in a department store.

He went on to work for EMI in 1962 before setting up Max Clifford Associates in 1970.

Clifford’s extensive contacts in Fleet Street – he described himself as “often poacher and gamekeeper at the same time” – meant he was increasingly turned to as a commentator on media.

When aged celebrities began being arrested on suspicion of sex crimes, Clifford took to the radio claiming that former household names were “frightened to death” of falling under suspicion.

Operation Yewtree was launched in October 2012 by Scotland Yard after Jimmy Savile was finally exposed as a prolific paedophile.

Days after it started, Clifford appeared on LBC and said in the 1960s and 1970s some stars “never asked for anybody’s birth certificate”.