London: Max Clifford, the one time master of selling "kiss and tell" who died in hospital on Sunday aged 74, used to like telling The Telegraph that there were three Asian women in his life - Pamella Bordes, Faria Alam and Shilpa Shetty.

There had been no charge that Clifford, who was in the third year of an eight-year prison sentence for historic sex offences against girls as young as 16, had abused any of the three.

He claimed that back in 1989 he got tabloids to chase Pamella, the erstwhile Pamela Singh, a former Miss India, to divert attention from someone who was his real client. In his office, Clifford hung a framed front-page picture of Bordes, who had had affairs with a number of powerful men, including former The Sunday Times editor Andrew Neil.

In 2004, he represented Faria, the Bangladeshi secretary at The Football Association in England who sold her story to the tabloids for several hundred thousand pounds that she had slept with Sven-Göran Eriksson, then the country's football manager. They apparently made passionate love at his home in Sweden but "only he had carefully stacked the dishwasher after dinner".

Shilpa took Clifford on as her PR agent in 2007 after she won Celebrity Big Brother after suffering racist abuse on the Channel 4 reality show, but they parted company after she had made quite a bit of money from the tabloids. She and businessman Raj Kundra also denied they were having an affair - Kundra married Shilpa after divorcing his first wife.

One of Clifford's many successes was getting footballer David Beckham £1m for a ghosted autobiography - Clifford's cut was usually 20-25 per cent. He also got £1m as compensation after the now defunct News of the World admitted "hacking" his phone.

In the pre-Harvey Weinstein era, Clifford's double life over 20 years as a serial abuser of vulnerable girls emerged in court. Clifford had rather more charm than Weinstein, was devoted to a disabled daughter, Louise, and gave generously to charity, but was also manipulative in getting sexual favours.

Prosecution lawyer Rosina Cottage said Clifford, who considered himself "untouchable", "is the maker of the kiss-and-tell celebrity and the breaker of reputations.... He knows how to manipulate, lie and get what he wants."

Louise said her father was taken to hospital after collapsing twice at Littlehey Prison in Cambridgeshire.