It was scandal to the Max, even in death
Max Clifford, publicist: b Kingstonupon-Thames, April 6, 1943; m (1) Elizabeth Porter, (2) Jo Westwood; 1d; d prison, December 10, 2017, aged 74.
Max Clifford liked to claim that he provided a ‘‘protection service’’ for celebrities and other 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 both in purveying and suppressing scandals, and for many years ran a virtual monopoly on tabloid kiss-and-tell stories, building his own reputation brilliantly on the back of his clients. As the former Mirror editor Piers Morgan observed: ‘‘Newspapers won’t turn him over because why would they bite the hand that feeds them?’'
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 blagged her way into a job in the House of Commons and exercised her charms on (among others) two newspaper editors, a politician and, it was alleged, a tyrant, a wealthy tycoon and a member of the royal family.
Though Bordes was never his client, Clifford’s name was associated with the story and he became seen as a useful gobetween for those wanting to make a packet out of the peccadilloes of the famous.
Thereafter, increasingly, Clifford was the master of his craft. He represented Mandy Allwood, who gave birth to octuplets, making her an estimated £1 million. He publicised details of 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, negotiating a deal which enabled Taylor to retire to New Zealand.
However, his speciality lay in exposing the tawdry secrets of Tory politicians. ‘‘I played a part in attaching the word sleaze to the word Conservative ...’’ he recalled. ‘‘I was happy to contribute to their downfall.’’
His autobiography Read All About It (2005) presented Clifford as a heroic figure who had raised millions for charity, stood up for the underdog and devoted his life to caring for his disabled daughter, Louise. Some of this was true, but interviewers were often disconcerted by the contrast between his claims to virtue and the cold vindictiveness he showed to those who crossed him. Clifford, observed one journalist, ‘‘has the instinct of the natural bully to imagine himself on the moral high ground even when standing knee-deep in the sewer’’.
Few tears were shed among Clifford’s many victims, therefore, when in December 2012 he was arrested by Metropolitan Police as part of the Operation Yewtree police investigation into historic sexual assault, on suspicion of sexual offences. In April 2013 he was charged with 11 counts of indecent assaults from 1966 to 1985 on girls and women aged 14 to 19. Clifford claimed the allegations against him were ‘‘completely false’’.
When the case reached court in 2014, the prosecution portrayed Clifford as a master of intimidation and manipulation who used his power and celebrity contacts to prey on girls seeking a career in showbusiness.
Clifford, however, dismissed his victims as ‘‘fantasists’’ and ‘‘opportunists’’ who were ‘‘jumping on a bandwagon’’ and trying to ‘‘cash in’’ by selling their stories.
He was openly contemptuous of the court proceedings, on one occasion creeping up behind a Sky News reporter as he made a report outside court and mimicking his gestures.
But on May 2, 2014 he was found guilty on eight counts of indecently assaulting four girls aged 14 to 19 between 1977 and 1984, and sentenced to eight years in jail, the judge in the case condemning him for causing more trauma for his victims with his ‘‘contemptuous’’ behaviour in court.
Maxwell Frank Clifford was born in Kingston-uponThames in 1943, the fourth and youngest child of an electrician, and had an uneventful working-class upbringing in Wimbledon. His autobiography tells how, on his first day at school, he intervened to save a weaker lad from a bully: ‘‘I’ve always hated bullies . . . in fact, I have always helped people and supported the underdog.’’
But in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph in 2000, he told a rather different story: ‘‘I hated arrogance and pomposity. I had my first experience of it on my first day at junior school. I was kicking a ball about and this boy began speaking to me in a very affected voice, telling me to clear off, so I hit him. He turned out to be the headmaster’s son.’’
He left secondary modern at 15 with no O-levels for a job in a local department store from which he was sacked. He then wangled a job as an editorial assistant at the Eagle comic and after two years moved to the Wimbledon Borough News and then the Merton and Morden News. His lucky break was joining the EMI press office just as the Beatles came along. As every journalist in the country wanted to talk to the band, they soon became familiar with Max Clifford.
Clifford set up his own PR business in 1970 and built up an impressive client list which included Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando, Marvin Gaye and Muhammad Ali, as well as a number of commercial companies.
Clifford achieved his first big publicity coup in 1986 with The Sun’s ‘‘Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster’' headline. The story, which involved Starr eating a ‘‘sandwich’’ containing someone’s pet hamster, was a complete fabrication by Clifford designed to help publicise the vegetarian comic’s forthcoming tour.
To keep the publicity going, Clifford ‘‘counter-spun’’ the story the next day by flying a Sun journalist to Starr’s home in Berkshire with another hamster for a photography session. The story gave a huge boost to Starr’s career and catapulted Clifford into the public eye.
Clifford freely admitted telling lies on behalf of clients, claiming that everyone involved knew it was ‘‘just a game’’ and noting that ‘‘most journalists would sell their own mothers for a great story’’.
Although Clifford was not too fussy about whom he was prepared to represent, he liked doing favours, not least because there might come a time when they were returned. In the 1990s he refused to act for a woman who had had an affair with a Labour politician he liked; the man later returned the favour by tipping him off that Cherie Blair was pregnant with her fourth child at the age of 45, a fact known only to a small circle of trusted friends and family.
On the whole, Clifford was good at smelling rats, a rare exception being Nadine Milroy-Sloan, a woman who falsely claimed that she had been sexually assaulted by the former Tory MP Neil Hamilton and his wife Christine. Clifford had brokered MilroySloan’s story in 2001 and subsequently had to pay the libelled couple undisclosed damages. Milroy-Sloan was jailed for false rape claims.
Max Clifford married Elizabeth Porter in 1967 and in 1971 they had a daughter, Louise, who developed juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. By all accounts Clifford was devoted to his daughter, who gave touching testimony on his behalf in court. He also did a great deal of fundraising for charities and was a patron of several, all of which dropped him after his conviction.
After his wife died of lung cancer in 2003, in 2010 Clifford married his former PA Jo Westwood, who divorced him in 2014, soon after he started his prison sentence.
– Telegraph Group