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Clifford, who was today jailed for eight years after being found guilty of eight counts of indecent assault, became the country's most famous publicist and built up a client list with

celebrities ranging from Simon Cowell, Frank Sinatra and the Beatles to Muhammed Ali, Judy Garland and Marvin Gaye. The kiss-and-tell king was responsible for breaking stories including

David Beckham's alleged affair with his personal assistant Rebecca Loos, Jude Law's tryst with his children's nanny Daisy Wright, and John Prescott's fling with secretary

Tracy Temple. However, the spotlight turned on his own personal life as the allegations against him surfaced. During his trial, he admitted to cheating on the wife he claimed to love, and

had to endure details about the size of his manhood being publicly revealed. When asked today how it felt to be the subject of media attention, he replied that it was "not the first

time." However, previous revelations about his private life have been carefully controlled by the publicist, who boasted of his "legendary" sex parties and orgies in his 2005

book, Read All About It. Clifford, the youngest of four children, left school at 15 before joining the South London Press as a trainee reporter. He later moved to the EMI press office in

1962, where he was tasked with promoting a then-unknown band called the Beatles. He went on to set up his own PR Agency, Max Clifford Associates, in 1970, and became a celebrity in his own

right thanks to front page tabloid splashes. One of these included the infamous story entitled Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster - which it later emerged was dreamt up by Clifford as a publicity

stunt. A number of his celebrity contacts, including Birds of a Feather star Pauline Quirke, chat show host Des O'Connor and former page three girl Jilly Johnson gave evidence in his

defense. Clifford married his first wife, Elizabeth Porter, in 1967, and the pair had a daughter called Louise, now 43, who has supported her father throughout his trial. Ms Porter passed

away of lung cancer in 2003, and it later emerged that she had turned a blind eye to her husband's indiscretions during  their marriage. The publicist's second wife, his former PA

Jo Westwood, has not attended court with her husband. Clifford also helped to bring to light stories exposing rock star Gary Glitter and music mogul Jonathan King as paedophiles. The

publicist is the first person to have been convicted under operation Yewtree, which was launched in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal. Days after the inquiry started in 2012, Clifford

appeared on LBC to talk about the sexual atmosphere for famous clients in the 1960s and 1970s. He said: "All kinds of things went on and I do mean young girls throwing themselves at

them in their dressing rooms at concert halls, at gigs, whatever. "They never asked for anybody's birth certificate and they were young lads ... suddenly everyone's dream was

a reality." He said that stars from that era were "frightened to death" when accusations began to be leveled at their contemporaries about their conduct decades earlier. He

added: "We are talking about a lot of people that were huge names in the 60s and 70s and a lot of them barely remember what they did last week, genuinely. "For them to try and

recount what happened in a dressing room in 1965 or 1968 or 1972, genuinely they are frightened to death."