'Raw' Starr walks out of interview on sex abuse claims

Freddie Starr has stormed out of a television interview about his sex abuse claims ordeal.

The comedian also branded disgraced publicist Max Clifford “a different animal”.

Starr ordered Good Morning Britain presenter Susanna Reid to leave his home after she asked whether he had done “anything that could have been misinterpreted” in his past relationships, in an interview due to be broadcast today.

“Are you being serious?”, Starr replied, before removing his microphone and walking out of the room.

The veteran comic, who learnt last week he will not be prosecuted over sex allegations after spending 18 months on bail, later returned with his wife Sophie to continue the interview.

“It’s hard to have an interview like this with it being so raw,” Starr told the programme.

“I’ve only been released three days ago, I’m just catching up on my sleep.”

During the interview, Starr claims that he did not know the women who made the complaints against him, branding them “ghosts”.

He insists he has been “innocent all along” and felt the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) wanted to “put something there”.

“If they could’ve prosecuted me – they certainly would’ve done,” he says.

Starr also distances himself from Clifford, who achieved widespread fame with his links to The Sun’s infamous Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster story, after the PR guru was jailed for eight years earlier this month for a string of indecent assaults.

“Max Clifford was a different animal,” Starr says.

“I didn’t like Max Clifford – I didn’t go out with him, I didn’t do anything with him.”

Starr’s wife Sophie, 33, says her husband was scared to cuddle his own daughter during the Operation Yewtree investigation into him.

“It’s changed him as a man,” she says.

“It’s like even the little things like with his daughter, at one point he was scared to even cuddle her because you’ve got the world judging you.

“I know Freddie will come back from this.

“I would say he is one of the most caring, gentle men that you can ever meet. He’d do anything for anybody. And the fact is that for him to be accused of this, thank God it is now over, people can start to see the true Freddie and not the person that was portrayed in the media because it’s not him at all.”