SKY SPORTS CONTROVERSY:THE TRAGEDY of Richard Keys' hour on TalkSport radio yesterday was that few attempts at self-exculpation have ever demonstrated with such stark clarity the need for the existence of Max Clifford.

Just hours later Keys had resigned. Sky Sports confirmed Keys’ resignation would take “immediate effect”.

The publicist Clifford, whose football-related clients have included Antonia de Sancha, Rebecca Loos and Faria Alam, and who claims to have helped two gay Premier League footballers stay safely in the closet, would surely have prevented Keys from the exhibition of self-harming that took place when he decided to tell his side of the story that has already terminated the career of Andy Gray, his friend and Sky Sports colleague.

Under fire following the revelation of off-air insults of a sexist nature directed at a female assistant referee last weekend, and under even more pressure after Gray’s dismissal, Keys had contacted TalkSport with a request to be given time to explain himself.

When he arrived in the studio, to be greeted by two co-hosts, Paul Hawksbee and Andy Jacobs, who run a genial sports-themed chat show, but are hardly noted for their inquisitorial talents, the Sky Sports presenter succeeded only in digging a deeper hole for himself.

As exercises in damage limitation go, it was like walking into Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors wearing a suicide bomber’s exploding vest.

He had gone on the show, he said, to repeat his apology to Sian Massey, the official in question, and to tell his side of the story. But somehow every phrase and every inflection seemed to indicate that here was a man not only lacking in genuine contrition but perhaps gripped by a suppressed conviction that, in the end, he was the injured party.

He said he was sorry for what had happened. He said it several times. But the more he said it, the more the undertone of exasperation in his voice made him sound like someone saying, with ponderous emphasis: “I’ve said I’m sorry, all right?” and not meaning it at all.

Having claimed that he wanted to correct some of the many errors in the reporting of the case, all he could identify was the insignificant misreporting of the day and time at which he phoned Massey to make his apology.

And even then his description of the conversation between them stressed the “banter” that took place, as though they had suddenly become the best of mates, oblivious to the fact that the verbatim report of a cold call by a famous male TV figure with a quarter of a century of experience to a 25-year-old female assistant referee might not necessarily be expected to contain the true feelings of the call’s recipient.

Keys also implored those in the media who have been concentrating their coverage on Massey – including the Sun, who turned her into a cover girl with a picture taken at a social function – to lay off. "Leave Sian alone," he declared, as though they had been stalking his own daughter.

An admirable sentiment, but not one that he has any business making, with a vehemence that suggested they had a share in the responsibility for the story.

Keys used the words “ironic” and “part of a wider conversation” to explain the original remarks, without going on to explore what he meant. But a clue to his complete failure to grasp the significance of the story came when he said, with an almost audible shake of his head: “I cannot believe the frenzy that has blown up.” To underline his astonishment, he said it again.

It was with a tone of injured innocence that he reported his failed attempt to call Karren Brady, the West Ham United vice-chairman, to apologise.

He seemed affronted that she had not taken his call. Noting that there had been no answering service operating on her mobile, he was unable to resist the snarky aside that perhaps this was an indication of West Ham’s current state.

Like the reference to "dark forces at work" and the expression of his initial belief that the damage from the affair was "controllable", his comparison of the appearance of Sky Sports footage on YouTube with the phone-hacking allegations concerning the News of the Worldappeared to issue from the mind of a man with a very uncertain understanding of the world outside his own privileged bubble.

Nothing made that more plain than the most breathtaking declaration of a remarkable 60 minutes. “I’m not proud of what happened at the weekend,” he said, “but with success comes envy.”

And there we had it.

The true feelings of a man who, his sense of his own importance distorted by 20 years of fronting football matches on satellite TV, has lost touch with reality.

And who by that logic no doubt imagines himself to be not the author of his own downfall, but the victim of a witch-hunt.

Quite inadvertently, he and Gray have altered for ever the standing of women in the often inhospitable world of professional football. And for that, they will never be forgotten.

GuardianService