Media
Public affairs. Hype, spin and celebrity sleaze: is this what modern Britain is all about? Christine Hamilton takes on Max Clifford
Published 17 October 2005
Max Clifford: read all about it
Max Clifford and Angela Levin Virgin Books, 248pp, £18.99
ISBN 1852272376
This is a book you certainly don't want to put down; you just want to lob it vigorously into the rubbish bin. As unctuous hagiographies go, I suppose it does the business. Ninety per cent of it is in the inverted commas of a verbatim transcript. Angela Levin has organised her subject's recorded words into a professional enough encomium of self-praise, and she triumphantly proves her ability to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse. Her next project? How about a new official biography of North Korea's Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il?
As a subject, Clifford personally, and the kiss-and-tell tabloid sleaze he personifies, tell us something interesting about the media- and celebrity-dominated society of modern Britain. The brazen amorality of his trade and the moral dilemmas of his sordid activities provide scope for interesting analysis. How far has the tabloid culture, so successfully fuelled by Clifford, influenced politics in the past generation? The mindset of people who deliberately seek to prosper from other people's suffering is always fascinating. However, if you are hoping for depth in this slim volume, you will be sadly disappointed. Better to dive into a puddle. On second thoughts, better not, given the stench of the murky waters within which Max works.
I must declare an interest. In February this year, Max wrote out a large cheque to my husband and me to settle a libel case we had brought against him. In the book he is always dispassionate, unflappable, in control of himself and the situation. If that is true, our encounter with him was the exception to the rule and he made the fundamental error of allowing his deep dislike of us (he says he doesn't hate anyone) to cloud his judgement.
Nadine Milroy-Sloan had made false allegations of rape against us, as a result of which we were arrested. Max foolishly endorsed Milroy-Sloan on live TV. That was a mistake. He claims that this uncharacteristic lapse in his infallibility cost him "in the region of £250,000", boasting that it was only what he earned in that month. This assertion suggests that anything Max says about himself by way of damage limitation should be treated with caution. He demanded that we keep the very substantial damages figure confidential. We would have been happy to release it, but he may have been embarrassed by the size. The top-flight lawyers he retains do not come cheap, so he has clearly forgotten most of his legal costs if he thinks the settlement cost him only £250,000 - my estimate is closer to half a million.
Max's account of this, the only episode I can comment on authoritatively, is curiously deficient in other respects. He makes his relationship with Milroy-Sloan sound as casual as a bus-queue encounter. You would never guess that he had rep-resented her and acted publicly as her mouthpiece. The little liar (Nadine, not Max) was entitled to anonymity as the supposed victim of an alleged sexual attack. Max brokered a £50,000 deal with the News of the World to reveal her identity as part of a tearful, soft-focus interview.
It is odd that Max is silent on this, as it was a ground-breaking innovation. Parliament had granted anonymity to victims of sexual assaults to prevent further distress from a prurient press. Max had the brilliant idea of turning this into a tradable commodity. Providing a financial incentive to concoct false allegations against "celebrities" was a grotesque betrayal of genuine victims. Every time high-profile allegations are exposed as false, it makes it harder for actual victims to be believed. The moral issues involved are not explored in the book, just as, no doubt, they are not explored in the mind of Max.
He is a "cheeky chappie", gleefully admitting all manner of chicanery to further the interests of his clients. Shading the truth, or suppressing it altogether when inconvenient, are both parts of his stock-in-trade. He describes how girls would attend his 1970s sex parties to meet TV and film producers: "They saw the parties as a way of getting an Equity card . . . I knew one or two agents who would issue false contracts in return for sexual favours." Business is business to this self-proclaimed "socialist". Max also delights in being "Jack the Lad". He organised weekly group-sex parties, and had no pangs of conscience about his wife: the parties "didn't change what I felt about her and I'm sure she never found out. It meant I could enjoy the parties and then go home and enjoy being domestic." So that's all right, then.
However tawdry and repulsive his exploits may seem, all is supposed to be forgiven when you read the pages devoted to his charitable work, for which, of course, he seeks no recognition. He loves his mum, is a diamond geezer to his underdog friends and neighbours, and is kind to animals. So what if he makes his money out of helping to wreck people's lives and causing or exacerbating personal distress? Someone's got to do it.
There are no juicy revelations in this book. By definition, they have already been sold to the media on behalf of his clients. Nor is Max going to reveal the details of the stories he suppressed. The "public interest" he claims in exposing the truth about public figures does not apply to all his clients, especially if they are newspaper editors. Naturally, there is hypocrisy in "celebs" using the media for their own ends and then complaining when their feet of clay are exposed. However, for all Max's posturing, it is little more than the pot calling the kettle black.
If there is any value in this sorry tale, it lies in the gruesome reminder that, for many editors, the only time morality comes into their job is when they are pointing accusing fingers at others. Piers Morgan neatly sums it up: "I don't think it was morally wrong that he often controlled my agenda. He understood, as I did, that the whole thing was a game."
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