Press GazetteMcCann spokesman Clarence Mitchell joins Freud3 September 2008
By PA Mediapoint
The former BBC Journalist who became official spokesman for Kate and Gerry McCann has joined PR firm Freud Communications.
Clarence Mitchell started work at the London office of Freud Communications yesterday as a consultant specialising in crisis and issues management, media training and scenario planning.
He will still represent the McCanns as they continue to search for their daughter Madeleine, who went missing from a Portuguese holiday resort on May 3 last year.
Mitchell said: "It is an exciting opportunity to work with one of the biggest and best PR companies in the country.
"I am very grateful to Freud for expressing an interest in me.
"I hope my media background and the high-level media contacts that I have developed will be of benefit to Freud."
He said he could end up working with large companies, prominent individuals or football clubs that find themselves in the news - but stressed he had not parted ways with the McCanns.
Mitchell is a former BBC journalist who reported on the royal family and major crime stories including the Fred and Rosemary West killings and the murder of Milly Dowler.
After nearly 20 years at the corporation he left in 2005 to become director of the Government's media monitoring unit.
Shortly after Madeleine disappeared the Foreign Office sent Mr Mitchell out to the Algarve to help the McCanns deal with the massive media interest in the case.
He did this for a month before returning to the UK, then took over as the couple's full-time spokesman last September.
Mitchell will also continue to offer pro bono advice to Fiona MacKeown, whose daughter Scarlett was murdered in Goa, and the parents of teenage murder victim Jimmy Mizen.
