THE SUN is shining on Max Clifford. As it always does. The sky over Marbella was cloudy until he arrived, then the sun came out. Headlines, weather . . . is there nothing this man cannot fix? “You can’t beat this,” he says, turning his grey-haired head towards the sun. Tiny lizards lounging on the terracotta wall do exactly the same thing. Clifford’s eyes are closed, but somehow he still knows exactly what’s going on around him. An ice-cube clinks in his Coke. “I love it here,” he says, reaching for his glass.
Clifford, soon to be 62, has been coming to Spain for nearly 40 years. “My wife and I started by visiting places like Torremolinos.”
Which is no longer little or, despite a big makeover, attractive. As clients got bigger and business got better, he got richer and stayed longer. Inevitably he made his second home in Marbella — where the stars sometimes outshine the sun. “You don’t need to speak Spanish, it’s very secure and it’s more convenient than the Caribbean.”
When his daughter was born another, more serious, reason arose for spending time here. “Louise suffers from rheumatoid arthritis and the climate here is kinder than in England,” he says. “And there’s a great hospital with good doctors near by.”
Louise — who works with her father — often flies here with friends. His apartment is packed with pictures of her, Max and his wife Elizabeth, who died in 2003.
Marbella remains a celebrity magnet and is akin to a living Hello! cavalcade. All white smiles, deep tans and no soul. Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith keep a villa here, as does the ever-young Julio Iglesias. Sean Connery competes with the Sierra Blanca mountains to be the craggiest local. Euro-trash aristos flock here to fritter away their remaining family fortunes. You have never seen a bigger queue than that in the Versace shop in Puerto Bañus on sale day.
Clifford is not, as you’d expect, in the middle of it all. “I like the quiet life,” he says. Really? “No I do, honest.”
His mobile phone goes off for the eleventh time during our interview. The ring tone is Love Me Do by the Beatles — one of his first clients.And it is annoying. “Simon, how are you, mate?” Cowell is both a client and a friend. Their twin bottle-brush hairstyles suggest they share a stylist. Clifford finishes the call.
“Right, what was I saying? Ah, the quiet life. “I spend two or three months here in chunks of about two weeks. I stay at the apartment for four or five days, then start venturing into town and being a bit more sociable. But out here I don’t have to see anyone if I don’t want to.”
“Out here” is Las Alamandas — a gated development of 100 luxurious apartments in Golf Valley, a super-exclusive enclave in the already exclusive Nuevo Andalucía area of Marbella. The only sound, bar Clifford’s mobile, is silence. Yet the buzz of Puerto Bañus is just three minutes’ drive away (no one walks here).
Clifford bought off-plan almost five years ago through Majestic Real Estate — the company behind many of the swankiest developments on this part of the coastline. “It wasn’t risky,” he says. Little he does is. “They’d built phase one already.”
There are three apartments in the villa-style block. His is on the ground floor, surrounded by a terrace littered with wicker sun-loungers. The outdoor dining room, like the kitchen, is immaculate. “We do eat out a lot.”
Favourite local restaurants include Ogilvy & Mailer, which is English-owned, like many local businesses. Despite being a life-long teetotaller, Clifford often shows his face at Andy’s — the Puerto Bañus bar where everyone who is anyone knows your name. “I bought this place for £550,000,” he says. “I was offered £1.25 million last year but I’m not selling.”
The apartment has three bedrooms — one for him, one for Louise and one for guests. His bedroom is blue and a copy of‘ Grumpy Old Men by David Quantick lies on the bedside table. A spa bath awaits in the en suite bathroom. This is the house that scandal built.
Elsewhere, everything that isn’t beige is gold — the overall impression is of luxurious porridge. “It’s supposed to be relaxing,” says Clifford. The decor cost £100,000 — a stressful sum for most people. A copy of the Costa del Sol News sits atop a towering stack of glossies. The coffee table has a gleaming glass top, as does the dining table. Not that he dusts; cleaning is arranged by the VIP Club, a local life-management service. “They do everything — hire cars, book restaurants, keep the place ticking over.”
