Max Clifford

Maxwell Frank Clifford (6 April 1943 – 10 December 2017) was an English publicist and convicted sex offender who was particularly associated with promoting "kiss and tell" stories in tabloid newspapers.

In December 2012, as part of Operation Yewtree, Clifford was arrested on suspicion of sexual offences. He was sentenced to eight years in prison in May 2014 after being found guilty of eight counts of indecent assault on four girls and women aged between 15 and 19. He died in December 2017 after suffering a heart attack in HM Prison Littlehey.

Early life

Maxwell Frank Clifford was born in Kingston upon Thames on 6 April 1943, the son of Lilian (née Boffee) and electrician Frank Clifford. He was the youngest of four children, with one sister and two brothers. The family survived their father's regular bouts of unemployment, gambling, and alcoholism with the help and support of their grandmother and Clifford's sister, who was employed as a PA to the London Vice-President of Morgan Guarantee Trust Bank. Clifford left school at 15 with no qualifications, and he was sacked within four months of his first job at Ely's department store in Wimbledon. His brother Bernard used his print union connections to secure Clifford a job as editorial assistant on the Eagle. When the publication moved premises, Clifford decided to take redundancy, buying his first house and finding work with the South London Press to train as a journalist.

Career

Early work as a publicist

After working in newspapers for a few years, writing an occasional record/music column and running a disco, Clifford replied to an advertisement and joined as the second member of the EMI press office in 1962, under Chief Press Officer Syd Gillingham. As the youngest and the only trained journalist in a team of four, Clifford claimed he was given the job of promoting the then relatively unknown Beatles, including during their first tour of the United States.

After Gillingham left EMI, he asked Clifford to join him at Chris Hutchins's PR agency. Among the artists they represented were Paul and Barry Ryan, who introduced Clifford to their stepfather, impresario Harold Davidson, who handled the UK affairs of Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland.

In 1970, aged 27, and after Gillingham retired, Clifford left Hutchins and started his own agency, Max Clifford Associates. Based in the offices of Joe Cocker's manager, he started off by representing Sinatra, Cocker, Paul and Barry Ryan, Don Partridge, and Marvin Gaye. He later also represented Muhammad Ali and Marlon Brando.

Pamella Bordes

Clifford was approached by a brothel madam, who had provided one of Clifford's clients with various services, worried about publicity from an investigative reporter from the News of the World. Clifford asked the madam to reveal details of her girls and clients, and found that one prostitute, Pamella Bordes, was simultaneously dating Andrew Neil (then editor of The Sunday Times), Donald Trelford (then editor of The Observer), Conservative minister for sport Colin Moynihan, and billionaire arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. Clifford rang News of the World editor Patsy Chapman and drip-fed her the story of Bordes through the investigative reporter she was using on the madam. The story was published in March 1989 under the headline "Call Girl Works in Commons", since it was discovered she had a House of Commons security pass arranged by MPs David Shaw and Henry Bellingham. Clifford acknowledged the significance of the Bordes story in shaping his career: "It opened the world of kiss-and-tell... Even though she was never my client, my name was associated with the story..."

Clients

Clifford came to public attention after creating the infamous "Freddie Starr ate my hamster" headline in 1986 for The Sun in an effort to draw attention to his client, Freddie Starr. In May 2006 the BBC nominated "Freddie Starr ate my hamster" as one of the most familiar British newspaper headlines over the last century. Clifford later represented various clients, including former Liverpool left-wing politician Derek Hatton, for whom Clifford created an affair to change his image; O. J. Simpson, for which reason Clifford claimed to have received death threats; Gillian McKeith, whose adverts he believed harmed her image; Rebecca Loos, when she negotiated with the press about her alleged affair with England football captain David Beckham; and Jade Goody, during the reality star's cervical cancer and death. Clifford represented Simon Cowell for over a decade and was credited with shaping his public image; Cowell dropped Clifford following Clifford's 2014 conviction. In 2016, a judge awarded former client Paul Burrell £5,000 damages after Burrell sued Clifford, saying that Clifford forwarded private material in a fax to Rebekah Brooks at News of the World in 2002.

Journalist Louis Theroux followed Clifford in the BBC Two series When Louis Met... in a 2002 episode titled When Louis Met ... Max Clifford. During filming, it appeared that Clifford was trying to set up Theroux during a PR stunt in Sainsbury's. It backfired after Clifford was heard lying on his microphone, unaware it was still on.

Clifford represented a witness in the case against Gary Glitter. In 2005, Clifford paid damages to settle defamation proceedings brought by Neil and Christine Hamilton after he represented Nadine Milroy-Sloane, who was later found to have falsely accused the pair of sexual assault. Also in 2005, he told reporters that he would not represent Michael Jackson after he was found not guilty of child abuse charges, saying: "It would be the hardest job in PR after [representing] Saddam Hussein". Following the Jimmy Savile sexual abuse scandal, but prior to his arrest, Clifford claimed that dozens of "big name stars" contacted him and feared they would become implicated in the scandal; he claimed that in the 1960s and 70s they "never asked for anybody's birth certificate" before having sex.

LGBT clients

Clifford helped clients who wished to conceal their sexual orientation from the public. He claimed that he was approached twice by major football clubs to help make players present a "straight" image. In an interview with Pink News, reported on 5 August 2009, Clifford said that if a gay or bisexual football player came out, his career would be over:

To my knowledge there is only one top-flight professional gay footballer who came out – Justin Fashanu. He ended up committing suicide. I have been advising a top premiership star who is bisexual. If it came out that he had gay tendencies, his career would be over in two minutes. Should it be? No, but if you go on the terraces and hear the way fans are, and also, that kind of general attitude that goes with football, it's almost like going back to the dark ages.

Clifford said none of his clients had been outed.

In December 2009, he told The Independent on Sunday that he had represented two high-profile Premier League footballers in the past five years whom he advised to stay in the closet because football "remains in the dark ages, steeped in homophobia".

Politics

Clifford stated that what motivated him was much more than just money; he said he could not stand hypocrisy in public life, reserved a particular disgust for lying politicians, and watched with growing anger what he thought happened to the National Health Service over the past 20 years. For this reason, and because of his working-class background, Clifford was a traditional Labour supporter who worked to bring down the government of John Major because he felt that the NHS was being mismanaged.

The Major government

In light of Clifford's view of the deteriorating state of the NHS – having obtained treatment for his daughter, who had been diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis – and moral differences with members of the John Major government, Clifford worked to expose stories to help the Labour Party to power. Although not instrumental in exposing David Mellor's affair with Antonia de Sancha, Clifford's battle in representing de Sancha against the contrived post-spin story of the "family man Mellor" handled by counter PR Timothy Bell ultimately derailed Major's 'Back to Basics' agenda. Clifford invented the story which claimed Mellor made love in a Chelsea F.C. football kit, though he was blocked from mentioning it in his memoirs. Clifford also helped to expose Jeffrey Archer's perjury in the 1980s during his candidacy for the post of Mayor of London.

On 18 February 1995, he was interviewed at length by Andrew Neil for his one-on-one interview show Is This Your Life? on Channel 4.

The Blair government

Although a supporter of the Labour Party, Clifford's approach in dealing with the Blair government was similar to that which he employed with Major's preceding Conservative government. The first instance of this was the story of the Secretary of State for Wales, Ron Davies. Clifford was subsequently accused by David Blunkett, at the beginning of November 2005, of having a role in Blunkett's second resignation. This derived from claims made on behalf of a much younger woman, who had become involved with Blunkett, over Blunkett's business interests, which were published in The Times.