Just before our interview ends, Max Clifford’s mobile phone starts to ring. The name of an international player glows green on his handset and he apologises before he takes the call. The player sounds distressed. He has been caught with his pants down and he is paying Clifford £20,000 a month to save his skin by keeping the story out of the papers. Welcome to the wonderful world of public relations.
“Nothing surprises me any more,” Clifford said in the living-room of his immaculate Surrey home. “There was the major football star who was a drug dealer a few years ago. It was something I kept quiet because he got involved with some very nasty people who made it clear that if he didn’t co-operate he wouldn’t be around for very long and nor would his family. But we managed to sort it out and get him away.”
Sorting out problems or creating them — depending on who the 63-year-old publicist is representing and your point of view — is what Clifford does for a living and over the past few years more and more of his time has been taken up by looking after footballers who turn to him during the calm before the storm. Been playing away from home? Your agent knows who to call.
Advertisement
“I get approached about half a dozen times a week by people who want to sell stories about footballers,” he said. “Most likely the girl has come to us and then you are in the best possible position. It doesn’t guarantee me a result, but I’ve got a better chance than anyone else. She’s normally a nice girl who doesn’t want to kiss and tell, but the player has led her on. So you speak to him or his agent and say, ‘ Right, she is going to do a really nasty piece — if I was you I would sort her out. She would get twenty grand for that story, but twenty grand is nothing to you. You don’t want your wife to know so what I suggest is this . . .’ ”
Most of the time, players take his advice and play the game, but sometimes the story is so huge that nothing can keep it off the front, back and middle pages. “There has only been one big David Beckham story and of course I was representing Rebecca Loos,” he said. “If, allegedly, he had an affair with Rebecca then he was old enough to know what he was doing, but it hasn’t caused him any problems. There were three winners: David came out of it as the innocent, Rebecca made a fortune and Victoria Beckham got massive publicity, which is what she craves.”
Despite spending an increasing amount of his time sifting through players’ dirty laundry, Clifford still sets his video for Match of the Day every Saturday, but his dealings with players have left a sour taste in his mouth. As a youngster growing up in Wimbledon in the 1950s, his father would take him to Craven Cottage to watch Johnny Haynes strut his stuff. The legendary late Fulham captain is still his only hero, but nowadays Clifford no longer believes that players are worthy of adulation.
“I wouldn’t work with 90 per cent of them,” he said. “There was one who came to me recently with a huge gambling problem. I looked after him, stopped it coming out and in return asked him to go to a children’s hospice that I am involved with. Six months later, I’m still waiting.”
Players may continue to live down to his expectations, but his dealings with managers have also left him underwhelmed. Seven months ago, it was Steve McClaren who was hanging on his every word. When Luiz Felipe Scolari ruled himself out of the running to become England head coach, McClaren slipped into pole position in the race to replace Sven- Göran Eriksson. Everything was falling into place for the former Middlesbrough manager until he found out that his affair with his secretary during a trial separation from his wife was about to become front-page news.
Advertisement
“I have never approached anyone in my life — Sinatra, the Beatles, Marlon Brando — they all come to me,” Clifford said. “Steve McClaren’s agent called me. I sorted it out, I made sure the story was sympathetic to him and I helped get him the England job.”
McClaren was so impressed with Clifford’s handiwork that the damage control guru was hired to look after the new England head coach full-time in July, but according to Clifford that was before the FA realised what it was about to let itself in for. McClaren may have forgotten, but Clifford was the man who represented Faria Alam, the secretary whose affairs with Eriksson and Mark Palios, the former FA chief executive, had turned English football’s governing body into a laughing stock.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, McClaren started giving Clifford the cold shoulder before the PR man called the whole thing off last month. “During the time I was involved, several people came to me with stories about Steve which were untrue which would have made the papers, but I was able to stop them,” Clifford said.
To an outsider it may look as if McClaren used Clifford to fight a fire that could have cost him his dream job and then dumped him without ceremony, but if the consummate media manipulator feels any bitterness towards his former client, he hides it well.
“This was going to be a four-year project,” Clifford said. “Would it have made a difference? I would have been able to answer that in four years’ time, but I know that there will be a lot of problems that could have been avoided.”
Advertisement
PERSONALITY PLUS POINTS
Max Clifford has been working in PR for more than 40 years and this is his verdict on who is hot and who is not when it comes to playing the media game.
ON SAM ALLARDYCE
“I have been doing some work with him and I like him very much. He is very straightforward — I was away when Panorama was shown on TV.”
ON JOSÉ MOURINHO
Advertisement
“He has the same arrogance as all major stars — there was nothing modest about Frank Sinatra or Marlon Brando. As long as Chelsea are at the top and he has the money to buy all the world’s best players then he will be fine.”
ON MOHAMED AL FAYED
“He is a great showman and we have what I call a tropical relationship — it is mainly hot and sunny and then you get a storm. He shouts at me then I shout at him and then a month later he rings me up and says: ‘When are you going to come over and have lunch?’ ”
ON WAYNE ROONEY
“You have to get the message out there that he cares, that he wants to put something back. Kids who are in trouble or are going the wrong way wouldn’t listen to me or you, but they would listen to Wayne Rooney.”
Advertisement
ON ARSÈNE WENGER
“Wenger is different class. He is by far the best manager in football — not in terms of results but because of the way he approaches and teaches his players. He is the most sophisticated manager in British football. If I owned a football club then he is the only manager I would want.”
ON DAVID BECKHAM
“He is a good example of what is possible. David Beckham has handled himself increasingly well as the years have gone by. He is set up for life and he is very popular — if only he had a good speaking voice.”