Public Relations guru Max Clifford tells greatreporter.com how he became as knowledgeable as he is notorious in the British press...

Max Clifford - the UK's best known publicist and a consummate media manipulator - says the media was a totally different world when he started out.

"Those were very different times,” he recalls. “There was no public relations industry in this country. We were just press officers, in my case in a record company."

It was the early 1960s, when Clifford embarked upon a career that would make him a staple in the newspaper industry. So, how did he do it?

"There was a great deal of luck involved and also being in the right place at the right time,” he recalls.

"I began as a local newspaper journalist in south London and I only got the job because I was very much into sports and was friendly with the sports editor.

“A chief reporter there called Maggie Britton who'd worked on major provincial papers taught me the ropes and I started to write a music column. That put me in contact with record companies and I was offered a job by Ian Mayne, a music industry press officer, back in 1962.

“I was only 19 when we launched a previously unknown band called The Beatles. We also launched Cliff Richard and Adam Faith, and a few years later Tamla Motown. So it was the right time, right place, and I was extremely lucky."

Clifford says it was a simpler business to get clients publicity in those days because only a handful of journalists worked on the nationals, covering everything from showbiz to music.

“If you knew them, and the people on the major provincials, you had the whole country covered,” he explains.

"Because of the huge success of the Beatles, everybody was contacting us from every country. So I built up very good contacts from day one. But those were much gentler times, and contemporary journalism is a far more brutal game now.”

“It's become a very, very hard business,” Clifford says.

“Tabloid journalists are particularly under pressure and you find increasing cynicism throughout the industry now. You’ve only got to go to the press awards to see everyone swearing at each other, booing at everybody, drunk, fighting. And they’re meant to represent the cream of British journalism!"

The main reason for the decline in media bonhomie is that journalists are fighting for a bigger part of a smaller pot, Clifford believes.

"Newspaper circulations are slowly declining, and there is a growing number of media outlets for the consumer. It’s become increasingly nasty, increasingly hostile and increasingly savage. Before, there was a camp camaraderie.

“Forty years ago when I started, a journalist who arrived late to a press briefing could come in late and ask his rivals what they had missed. Now, you won't get a hand from someone on your own paper because they're all in competition with each another."

Clifford admits this cut-throat competition is "wonderful" for his business.

"The biggest part of my business is not breaking stories; though we have had 158 front pages in the last 18 months,” he boasts.

"It’s doing public relations for stars and for organisations. Our clients range from a cosmetic surgeon to a private jet company to a property company. So it’s a very wide remit, which keeps things interesting.”

This is about protection, not promotion, Clifford says.

"For every story I break, there are 10 I stop. One example over the summer was Shane Warne. He was recently turned over for his various relationships. Well, during the months before that came out, his manager came to me and I stopped several stories. And then obviously I said: ‘I can't keep on doing this, I’m too busy on other things,’ and then a story came out. That illustrates how involved you can get with your clients.”

Clifford is unsympathetic to celebrities who are brought to account in the press. They get more then enough protection through the law, he says.

"If you're rich and famous, the law is very much stacked in your favour. There are so many rich, famous people in the entertainment industry that get away with an awful lot. The only people who don't get protection [from the press] are the public. And as long there is no legal aid for libel, the press will continue to do whatever they want, whenever they want [to them]."

Clifford is similarly unimpressed with celebrities taking newspapers to court for defamation using no win, no fee deals, as Sharon Stone recently did with the Daily Mail.

"They can afford expensive PR people like me and they can afford expensive lawyers," he says.

"The stars, the rich, the famous, the leaders of industry, they are very, very well-protected. It's like paying tax. If you’re rich, then you get away with an awful lot. If you’re poor, there’s no-one looking after you."