MAX Clifford was the "king of spin" who manipulated the media for huge personal gain. He made some stories appear on front pages - and prevented others from ever being published.

It was a skill which made him rich, powerful and arrogant, but his life is in ruins tonight after he was jailed for eight years as the first person to be convicted under Operation Yewtree.

Coverage of his downfall will inevitably be influenced by the joy of those in the media who were made to dance to his tune for so many years. Now they are dancing on the grave in which his reputation is well and truly buried, and taking delight in his humiliation during a trial in which even the size of his penis was ridiculed.

But beyond the media feeding frenzy whipped up by who Max Clifford was, there is the very serious issue that justice has been done at long last for his victims - women who found the courage to stand up and tell the world what he had done to them.

Clifford has shown no remorse and his attitude during the trial clearly angered Judge Anthony Leonard. At one point, the Clifford mimicked a television journalist who had been reporting on the case from outside the court. Being seen to trivialise allegations of sexual abuse was not a good idea.

As well as being a vindication of the courage of the victims, today's sentence also represents a vital result for the Crown Prosecution Service following the collapse of a number of high profile trials for sexual abuse. Coronation Street stars Bill Roache and Michael Le Vell were found not guilty of sexual abuse charges, as was Tory MP Nigel Evans, while Dave Lee Travis was cleared of 12 charges of indecent assault and faces a retrial on two more.

Another collapsed case would have led to further questions about the practicality of bringing historic sexual abuse allegations to court, and whether the sins of Jimmy Savile had led to a witch-hunt against celebrities.

The judgement against Max Clifford, and the severity of the sentence imposed on an 71-year-old man, shows that the passing of time will not protect the guilty - and that no one is above the law.