The most famous PR man in the UK, Max Clifford, is guest speaker at a business event taking place in the region next month. North-East Business Writer of the Year Mike Parker reports.

MAX CLIFFORD is the consummate professional. He has the unerring ability to make people feel at ease and, at times, even special.

For me, that moment came when the master of public relations refused to take a call on his mobile from Richard Wallace, the new editor of the Daily Mirror, to talk to me.

Speaking from his luxury mansion in Marbella, Spain, Clifford said: "He wants to know when I can do lunch. But that can wait."

Clifford is in the region on July 5 when he will be one of the star turns at the Big Business Event, a two-day information and seminar forum being held at Newcastle United Football Club's St James' Park.

As a journalist, I really want to dislike Clifford. His overt confidence, bordering on arrogance ( he tells me he is not arrogant) and open boasts about his ability to manipulate the media would stick in the craw of any self-respecting reporter. But, try as I might, I find him likeable.

Clifford's success story is the original rags to riches tale. His first job paid him a few shillings a week - now he owns a company with an annual turnover of £2m.

A keen sportsman, it was his love of water polo that put him on the road to media stardom and a successful business career.

Having left school at 15 "without so much as a certificate in woodwork", he was asked by the sports editor of the local paper - the Merton and Morden News, in Wimbledon - to write match reports for his team. His aptitude for PR was evident even at the age of 17: "I used to give myself good write-ups," he admits.

He was soon offered a full-time job as trainee news reporter, before leaving in 1962 to join the press office at record label EMI.

"Within a few weeks, I was given an unknown band to look after, The Beatles," he says, blithely.

"It was the right time, right place and I took to it like a duck to water.

"My part in the Beatles' success story was non-existent. Their part in helping me was huge. In two years, they were world famous - everyone came to EMI and I was the contact. It was priceless."

His time with EMI, and later with a PR company established by the record label's former chief press officer Syd Gillingham, put him in contact with the leading lights of the music industry.

From The Temptations to The Jackson Five, The Bee Gees to Cream, Clifford was immersed in a role that paved the way for his future success.

The majority of business people will look with envy upon the ease with which the 61-year-old's company took off. He claims never to have gone looking for business, "people always come to me."

Irrespective of people's views on the morals and ethics of his work, he clearly enjoys his job. He said: "I am in the middle of a dozen games of chess every day, often to keep things out of the media, but also exposing the Jeffrey Archers and Gary Glitters. There is a wide, wide variety of activity - a bit like a game of football, every game is different."

However successful he has been in business, Clifford's personal life has not been without its challenges.

He lost his wife, Liz, to lung cancer last April, and his only child, Louise, has fought the debilitating pain of rheumatoid arthritis since the age of six.

Now 31, she endured 20 years of surgery and treatment, adding up to 12 major operations, including a hip replacement, a knee replacement and a procedure to insert a metal rod in her spine.

Compared to this, Clifford says, taking on the PR job for the North-East would be simple. Despite the region being "non-existent" as far as people in the South are concerned, he says a star search and a touch of Cowell magic would put the region on the map.

"You work to your strengths. It is knowing the people you put forward not only epitomise the message, but they are capable of sustaining it, that they are not having a wild sex life."

"Image these days is not everything, but is not far from everything. Often, image has nothing to do with reality, but if you get that image right, it plays a huge part in your success."