Former PR adviser backs McCanns

Alex Woolfall, a public relations consultant who advised the couple, said they reacted exactly as he would expect after Madeleine vanished.

He said their behaviour convinced him of their innocence.

"They were behaving exactly as I thought someone in that situation would be," he told The Times newspaper.

"They had not slept. They were trying to work out what to do that might help generate images of her. They were desperately keen to publicise her face.

"I was struck at the perception of people who had watched Kate and Gerry: that they were very controlled and perhaps were not responding in a way people thought would be more natural.

"They were not at all controlled. When I was with them, they were between being completely distraught and trying to do what they felt was the right thing."

Mr Woolfall is an expert in crisis PR for communications group Bell Pottinger and was employed by the Mark Warner holiday resort in Praia da Luz in Portugal's Algarve, from where Madeleine vanished on May 3.

He helped the McCanns select photographs of Madeleine to be given to the media and to prepare a short statement appealing for help in finding the missing girl.

Portuguese police named the couple as suspects in Madeleine's disappearance, but the couple have always protested their innocence, and turmoil in the police investigation in the last week has further undermined any possible case against them.