Madeleine McCann's disappearance 'biggest story of the last decade'

Madeleine McCann's disappearance has turned from a news item into a phenomenon.

PR guru Max Clifford describes it as "probably the biggest story of the last decade", while the McCanns' own spokesman agrees it may be the "biggest human interest story ever".

It was not the first time a young child had gone missing abroad, nor was it the first time there had been massive media interest in the parents' plight.

But normally the reporters and TV crews move on after a few weeks - or at best months - and the search fizzles out.

This was not what happened when Madeleine McCann disappeared from her bed in her family's Algarve holiday apartment a year ago.

All last summer the little girl's smiling face beamed from the front pages of newspapers and through TV news bulletins.

The coverage reached a peak in early September, when Portuguese police named her parents Kate and Gerry McCann as suspects in her disappearance.

Things then became quieter but Madeleine was rarely completely out of the news, even when there were no concrete developments in the case.

Even experienced editors were taken aback by the public appetite for stories about the hunt for the little girl.

Commentators suggested it was the combination of the holiday location, a pretty child and respectable middle-class parents that created such interest.

The McCanns have had a series of spokesmen and women to deal with the demands of British and foreign newspapers and 24-hour rolling news channels.

Since mid-September this role has been filled by former BBC journalist Clarence Mitchell, who first met the couple last May when he was seconded to help them from his job as a civil servant.

He insists there are no immediate plans to scale down the McCanns' campaigning after the first anniversary of Madeleine's disappearance has passed.

Money is not likely to be a problem - there is now almost £1 million in the official Madeleine's Fund after the recent £550,000 libel payout to the McCanns by Express Newspapers.

Mr Mitchell said: "There will be more adverts, there will be more posters. Kate and Gerry will continue doing this for as long as it takes - if that's for the rest of their lives, then that is how long it will last."

He admits that the McCanns have welcomed the media coverage as a way of publicising their daughter's disappearance.

"The media kept asking and demanding. While the media want it, I would be failing them if I didn't provide or at least manage that," he said.

"I'm a buffer for them. It's not my daughter who is missing, therefore I can be a neutral arbiter of it all.

"The vast majority of this has been the media driving it. I may have provided more than others would have done. Has that fuelled it? Maybe.

"But what we have done each time, every message we get out, has one simple aim - finding Madeleine. Who on earth wouldn't do that?

"It just isn't an option in the modern media era to tell them to go away, particularly when you need their help and particularly in something like this when it's a global situation - she could be anywhere."

Mr Mitchell says the McCanns do not regret putting themselves in the public spotlight, even though some of the coverage has been painfully negative.

"When we went to the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in Washington, they said you should never regret any publicity, you have to keep her image out there," he said.

"At times they think it's all a bit much, but they don't regret it. The only regret they have is that they weren't with her when she was taken."

Mr Mitchell plays down his role, saying he simply attempts to manage a "daily tidal wave of calls" from journalists, lawyers, private detectives, the McCanns themselves, psychics and concerned members of the public.

"It's been hard work, and sometimes it's very wearing and sometimes I feel very drained. But it's my job," he said.

"And because it's so high profile, if I suddenly let up and give up on this, it will show.

"This is my first PR job - I'm actually a journalist who ended up becoming a civil servant briefly before doing this.

"I'm looking at it from a journalist's point of view so I can hopefully predict what people want."

He added: "At the start people were saying to me, it's the biggest human interest story ever. I'm beginning to agree with that."

Publicist Mr Clifford is representing Robert Murat, the Anglo-Portuguese property consultant who was the first person to be named a suspect in the case.

He praised the way the McCanns publicised the search for Madeleine.

"If you say that the main aim would be to get maximum attention and coverage in the hope of someone spotting Madeleine, and therefore getting her back, it has been a huge triumph," he said.

"It has had more publicity than any disappearance I can remember - it's probably the biggest story of the last decade in terms of coverage.

"Obviously that naturally brings about problems, particularly after the Portuguese police named them as official suspects.

"Up until they took the legal steps that they took just recently, they were getting increasingly a very hard time from the British media.

"Unfortunately all the publicity hasn't been successful in terms of finding Madeleine, but from a PR point of view, you can't fault it.

"They have handled an impossible situation incredibly well. The fact is that any parent that had lost their child would love to have had the exposure that the McCanns have had.

"Is that purely down to the McCanns and their PR machine? No, it's something that media took to and it almost carried along of its own volition. As a PR exercise, in terms of awareness, there's never been anything like it."

But Mr Clifford notes that Mr Murat's life has been "destroyed" by publicity that he did not seek.

"He wasn't getting the exposure to get his child back - it's been all pain and no gain for him," he said.