Clifford fails to block Burrell’s privacy claim

Disgraced PR guru Max Clifford has failed to block a privacy claim brought against him by former royal butler Paul Burrell.

Clifford, currently serving an eight-year jail sentence for sex offences, has branded Burrell’s £50,000 High Court action for breach of confidence and misuse of private information as an “affront to common sense”.

Burrell says that he hired Clifford in 2001 to limit bad press coverage about him but, rather than stopping stories, the publicist passed on material to the now-defunct News Of The World.