The dirt-disher comes clean

Max Clifford has made the careers of many celebrities and helped to bring down a government. Picture / Reuters

Britain's best-known scandal merchant, Max Clifford, is baring all in a book. He tells James Silver of the highs and lows of his PR career.

Max Clifford knows where the bodies are buried. From philandering footballers to sex-pest politicians, via kinky bankers and closet-case Hollywood stars, the high priest of tabloid kiss-and-tell has heard it all. What's more, Clifford claims to turn down "dozens" more stories - most of which would have editors drooling while fumbling for the chequebook.

"I'm not being flash, but I don't need the money," says the PR man, whose unique and profitable brand of scandal-midwifery has secured him 156 newspaper front pages in the past 18 months alone.

"What people don't understand is that more than 75 per cent of my business is conventional PR. It is representing property companies, cosmetic surgeons and people like Simon Cowell [American Idol and Pop Idol judge]."

The sun is streaming into his New Bond St offices. A client is waiting on the balcony, and actor Jude Law's now infamous nanny, Daisy Wright, is expected soon.

Clifford, 62, is luxuriously tanned, relaxed and reflective. "It's very easy for me to find out a lot about people," he says. "There's a lot of people I could have exposed but most of the time I choose not to. I weigh it up. I make up my own mind.

"Okay, so a chairman of a bank has been playing away. But does he really deserve to have his whole life destroyed because of it? I don't think so. You look at the pluses and the minuses."

But the scandal merchant is about to do a kiss-and-tell of his own. Next month, his autobiography Max Clifford: Read All About It hits the shelves, and is bound to cause a degree of jitteriness throughout the world's media, showbiz, sport and politics, and have tabloid editors twitching by their phones.

In his early PR years, Clifford represented the cream of A-list celebrities, including the Beatles, Marlon Brando, Muhammad Ali and Sinatra.

He has received an advance of £400,000 ($1 million) from publishers Virgin, with at least as much again expected from serialisation rights. He says there will be "one or two big revelations. But you can't be as lucky and enjoy life as much as I do and then want to have a pop at people.

"There are lots of journalists who have shaken my hand and given me their word and then gone back on it. It would be very easy to show them up for what they are and what they did but I've no wish to destroy someone's career."

Clifford is far too canny an operator to provide a dirt-dishing, warts-and-all story. Over the years, he has accumulated powerful enemies, many of whom would like nothing more than to see him brought down, preferably with his trousers around his ankles and each arm wrapped around an underage lap-dancer.

To his credit, he considers himself "fair game" for any hack wishing "to do a Max Clifford" on him. "So long as they say what a wonderful lover I was and I did it 18 times a night, then good luck to them!"

Brave words, but given his alliances with editors, it isn't surprising that nothing really damaging has so far found its way into print.

"Plenty of people out there have tried to do a job on me, particularly when I played a part in bringing down the last Tory government, revealing stories about Tory sleaze.

"A lot of rich and powerful people saw me as public enemy number one. And a few editors of Tory papers tried to have a go."

For a moment he lets down his guard. "Have I always been a good boy? No, I haven't. I've had a wonderful time out there. It's amazing to me that some of the things I got up to in those years haven't surfaced. But I've got a lot of friends."

Clifford is fairly thick-skinned but it rankles that others in the PR industry sneeringly dismiss him as nothing more than a peddler of tabloid tittle-tattle. One high-profile PR executive told the Financial Times "the fact that Max Clifford has become the spokesman for the PR industry ... devalues and undermines what PR does".

Clifford scoffs. "The difference is, many in the industry are desperate to be respected. I'm not. Every time I give a speech I say, 'PR's a wonderful game, it's better than working for a living' - they say it undermines them. I'm an embarrassment to them. But I don't mind.

"A lot of PR is lies and deceit. You can call it being economical with the truth or being creative, but that's what it is. The rest of the industry says: 'We don't tell lies'. Oh, well in that case, I'm the only person in PR who does.

"Do I distort the truth? Of course. Do I say, 'No, my client isn't gay' when I know he is? Of course. Does telling the truth matter? If it's showbiz, or rock and roll, then absolutely not. Did Freddie Starr actually eat a hamster? No, he didn't."

It seems the kiss-and-tell business is in rude health these days, partly fuelled by the Premiership football wage bonanza. Multi-millionaire footballers are targeted by young women who visit nightclubs hoping to land a night of passion with a player so they have a story to sell in the morning.

Clifford barely blinks at the cynicism. "Two or three girls go to a club and they've worked out that one player is worth £50,000 ($128,000), another's worth £30,000 ($77,000). That's the reality."

When asked if he sees anything immoral in it, he bridles: "Yes, it's totally immoral. But is the footballer as guilty as they are? Does he do it all the time? You weigh it up and you decide whether to place that story."

One of Clifford's biggest scoops was David Beckham's alleged affair with PA Rebecca Loos. Did he have any qualms about exposing the England star? "I didn't have any doubt that she [Loos] was telling the truth.

"If David Beckham plays away he only has himself to blame. He's old enough and ugly enough to know the risks he was taking. He's got his lawyers, he's got his PR people around him, he's got loads of cover. He shouldn't moan if he is caught."

Clifford was similarly convinced by nanny Daisy Wright's story of her affair with Jude Law. Wright flew to see the PR man in Marbella and spilled the beans by his pool-side.

Law has since admitted the infidelity, but how was Clifford so certain? "Look, how many stories have I broken? Hundreds. How many have proved to be untrue? There isn't one."

Born in 1943, Clifford left school at 15 without qualifications. He worked as a local newspaper journalist on the Merton and Morden News, where he eventually landed a record column.

That column led to a call from EMI's press chief Syd Gillingham and a job offer at the label. One of the first acts he promoted was the Beatles. Some time later Gillingham launched his own company, taking Clifford with him. By 1970, Clifford had set up on his own.

His wife, Liz, died of cancer two years ago, after 37 years of marriage. Today, he divides his time between his homes in Surrey and Marbella.

Clifford has his own, very personal, rough-hewn sense of right and wrong. He arranges visits to TV studios for sick children and takes on clients for nothing.

He is also the scourge of celebrity paedophiles. When I ask him if he has any regrets about exposing the sexual antics of pop impresario Jonathan King, who was recently released after serving a 3 1/2-year jail sentence for offences including sex with underage boys, he splutters.

"Are you joking? I'm very proud of it. Am I happy? Extremely. Also with [another of his scoops] Gary Glitter. I don't have any sympathy for paedophiles.

"People like King are clever. They got away with it for years. If you knew some of the conversations I had with his victims ... " He shakes his head and doesn't finish the sentence.

Another personal crusade was against John Major's Conservative government. Clifford's beloved only daughter, Louise, 34, suffers from rheumatoid arthritis. During three decades of treatment, he watched as the National Health Service was starved of funds and "destroyed".

"I watched the quality going down. I watched nurses leaving, I talked to doctors in the small hours. I watched them destroy one of the things we are most proud of, the NHS."

The Tory kiss-and-tell stories began to flow and he has no regrets about the outcome.

"It wasn't planned. It was fate. People came to me with stories. One story led on to another. And the word 'sleaze' became attached to the Tories.

"I believe - and I know they do - it played a big part in bringing them down. A lot of Tories hate me to this day, which I have no problem with. But if it had been Labour, exactly the same rules would have applied."

The interview comes to an end with the flurry of excitement surrounding the arrival of Daisy Wright. She's minor kiss-and-tell royalty at present and is shy and terrified by the prospect of her imminent appearance on American television. But Clifford's team have soon soothed her nerves. I can't help but feel that more than the kiss-and-tells over the years Max Clifford's greatest creation of all was himself.

- INDEPENDENT