Max Clifford and Shilpa Shetty: Honeymoon’s over

London, July 23: Max Clifford, Britain’s PR supremo who was taken on to represent Shilpa Shetty after her Celebrity Big Brother victory at the end of January, confirmed today that he and the actress had “parted company”.

His comment came as Raj Kundra, the 31-year-old businessman behind Shilpa’s recently launched perfume, denied allegations made yesterday by his wife, Kavita, that the actress had ruined her attempts to repair her marriage.

Kundra said in a statement: “My association with Shilpa is purely professional and over the past few months we have become good friends.”

It was Clifford who was taken on by Shilpa’s mother, Sunanda, when her daughter emerged victorious from Celebrity Big Brother.

Jazz Barton, the Indian woman who had acted de facto as Shilpa’s agent previously, was replaced by Clifford who secured exclusive and lucrative deals with newspapers and television for her.

Clifford said: “We parted two weeks ago. Our contract was for six months — that’s it.”

He said trying to represent Shilpa “was not easy”. The problems occurred, not so much with Shilpa, remarked Clifford, but “some people around her”.

Asked to be more specific, Clifford named Shilpa’s mother and her agent, Farhath Hussain, a well-known promoter of Bollywood concerts in Britain.

“What do they know about building an international career?” commented Clifford, who clearly had differences with Shilpa’s mother and Hussain over the future direction of the actress’s career. “Opening a restaurant became more important than television. We were looking to take someone and build an international career.”

Clifford cited problems of communication. “It’s a great pity. We have built up a lot of international careers with other people. But I could not do it with her. Her mum controls her 100 per cent. It was difficult to get a response. We would set up meetings with important people when the person would not turn up. That became incredibly difficult.”

During the six months Clifford had represented Shilpa, stories such as the ones which appeared yesterday in the News of the World and the Mail on Sunday had largely not been published by the media. When it came to looking after a client, “protection was more important than promotion”, ventured Clifford.

He described Kundra as someone “obsessed” with Shilpa. He also considered that yesterday’s reports about Shilpa’s personal life could be “potentially damaging” to her career.

Kundra has given a number of people, including Clifford, the impression that his relationship with Shilpa had developed beyond the purely professional.

Shilpa is now represented by Sterling Media, a London-based PR company with a portfolio of Bollywood and other Indian clients.

It issued a statement today on behalf of Kundra who disputed “the recent barrage of misinformation provided to (the) press from my ex-wife, Kavita Kundra”.

Kundra said: “My wife and I separated nine months ago and filed for divorce four months ago; we had agreed a mutual divorce…. At this time I had no association with Shilpa Shetty whatsoever.”

He went on: “I was introduced to Shilpa three months ago by her manager Mr Farhath Hussain with a proposal to launch a perfume with her. This began my professional association with her. My wife has made an accusation that Shilpa was the reason my marriage broke up which is untrue as I had no association with Shilpa at the time of our separation.”