Max Clifford upset over Simon Cowell's Danni Minogue revelation

 
17 April 2012
The Weekender

Sign up to our free weekly newsletter for exclusive competitions, offers and theatre ticket deals

I would like to be emailed about offers, event and updates from Evening Standard. Read our privacy notice.

Publicist Max Clifford said he was "disappointed" his client Simon Cowell co-operated with the writer of his unofficial biography

He said it had been a "massive own goal" to work on Tom Bower's book, which has revealed an affair with Dannii Minogue among other insights into his life.

Clifford - who has represented the media mogul for a decade - suggested on ITV1's This Morning that there were dozens of unfavourable stories about Cowell which he has been keeping out of the public eye.

Bower's book Sweet Revenge is being published later this month but has been serialised by The Sun. As well as the revelation about Minogue, the paper has reported the Britain's Got Talent judge has handed over a £5 million home to his ex-fiancee for being a bad boyfriend and that he made unflattering comments about last year's X Factor winners Little Mix.

Clifford said of the book: "You've got one or two stories - there's a hundred you haven't got and hopefully you won't have ... but the fact of the matter is, my advice was 'don't talk to Tom' because if you do people will think that you've worked with him on the book, as opposed to him coming out with a book and you saying 'well that's Tom's view of everything, but I've never spoken to him'."

Clifford continued: "The big problem I've had with this is because a lot of it is from Simon's own words, and this is a man who for 10 years I protected and always was desperately, desperately keen to have a private life and keep his private life very private.

"Of course I'm disappointed. We've had a close relationship for many, many years, I think the world of the guy.

"I think what Tom Bower says in the book speaks very highly of him as a person - someone who had a lot of failure and turned it into huge success ... but I just think, we as a team, have scored a massive own goal by talking to the man."

Clifford said the revelations about Cowell's private life had meant a number of women were coming forward to make claims about relationships.

"Of course, it's open season now. I had yesterday six different girls contact my office who have supposedly had relationships with Simon Cowell," he said.

"I'm sure that loads of girls will be contacting newspapers - many of whom have probably never even met him or have just had a picture taken with him.

"But that's inevitable and that would happen because of the Tom Bower book. So the difference is, he shouldn't have spoken to him in my opinion because that's given it, if you like, credibility from his own mouth and that will upset Dannii and everybody else."

Clifford said Cowell agreed to speak to Bower "because he thought that was in his best interest to do that".

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in