Ever since the Jimmy Savile sex scandal brought a bunch of BBC executives tumbling down, the UK has been, shall we say, more sensitive to the fact that famous people might have committed a bunch of sex crimes back in the Good Old Days, when sex crimes were not something that famous people much worried about. The latest famous person to be arrested and questioned about sex crimes? One of the UK's most prominent PR men, who specializes in selling tawdry sex tell-alls to the tabloids.

Max Clifford—whose career highlights are basically a laundry list of salacious sex stories that he helped usher onto the front pages—was arrested yesterday on "allegations of sex offences dating back to the seventies," charges he has denied. We do not know whether the allegations are true or not. But we do know that perhaps Max Clifford, professional media manipulator, should have known better than to open his mouth in a TV interview last month. From the WSJ:

"I think there's a lot of very famous people that are very concerned, very frightened," Mr. Clifford said in the TV interview. "In the 60s and 70s, everything opened up. All kinds of things were going on. At the time, these were young guys, many of them were being pursued in dressing rooms and concert halls and everywhere they went by young girls."

"A lot of them have trouble remembering what happened two weeks ago, let alone 40 years ago or more," Mr. Clifford added. "And because of all the Jimmy Savile revelations, they are all concerned that they're going to be brought into this in some way or other."

Rule number one of PR: shut up.

[Photo: Getty]