Max Clifford: publicist, sex abuser who fed on sleaze
● Max Clifford, who has died at the age of 74, was a publicist who liked to claim that he provided a “protection service” for celebrities and victims of press intrusion, but the common perception of him was of a man mired in sleaze — a judgment borne out in May 2014, when he was found guilty of sexually abusing four teenage girls and jailed for eight years.
Clifford specialised in purveying and suppressing scandals.
Shrien Dewani, accused of having his wife, Anni, killed while on honeymoon in Cape Town in 2010, hired Clifford as his PR man. Clifford laid into the South African police, insisting that his client was “totally innocent” and asking: “Are they going to take him and torture him and put plastic bags over his head?”
The story that changed the direction of Clifford’s life hit the front pages in 1989. It centred on Pamella Bordes, a call girl who talked her way into a job in Britain’s House of Commons and exercised her charms on (among others) two newspaper editors, a politician and, it was alleged, a tyrant, a tycoon and a member of the royal family. Although Bordes was never his client, Clifford was seen as a useful go-between.
Clifford represented Mandy Allwood, the mother who gave birth to octuplets, making her about £1-million. He publicised details of rugby player Will Carling’s friendship with the Princess of Wales, and represented Bryce Taylor, the gym owner who hid a camera in the ceiling to take pictures of the princess working out.
But his speciality lay in exposing the tawdry secrets of Tory politicians. “I didn’t have a conscience,” Clifford admitted.
He was particularly proud of his role in exposing the alleged affair between footballer David Beckham and PA Rebecca Loos, whose story he sold to the News of the World for £300 000.
His autobiography, Read All About It (2005), presented Clifford as a hero who devoted his life to his disabled daughter, Louise.
Few tears were shed by Clifford’s victims when he was found guilty on eight counts of indecently assaulting four girls aged 14 to 19 between 1977 and 1984. The judge also condemned him for his “contemptuous” behaviour in court. —
© The Daily Telegraph, London