THE jury in the trial of a British publicist accused of sexual assault had to be dismissed from the courtroom today after they couldn’t stop laughing about testimony concerning the defendant’s two-and-a-half inch penis.

Max Clifford, the defendant in the case, is a publicist accused of assaulting seven women, including today’s witness who testified the 70-year-old assaulted her in the 1980s.

The woman said when she was 17 and trying to break into the modelling world, Clifford took advantage of her, groping her, masturbating, and possibly ejaculating on her before trying to pimp her out to American film producer Cubby Broccoli in exchange for a role in a James Bond film.

But according to court testimony, Clifford, who once claimed to have slept with Diana Ross, was so poorly endowed that even his victims made jokes about his size.

The woman said in her evidence she thought Clifford was well-endowed and his penis was very large. “I had only seen one before, I had never seen one in that proximity and that situation.”

The court has heard claims that his penis is “tiny” and no more than two-and-a-half inches when erect. When Richard Horwell QC, defending, asked her about the issue, the woman remarked: “I have a small mouth. I do, my dentist has always said.”

The judge then had to dismiss the jury for a “few minutes” so they could compose themselves, saying, “It is inevitable in a case dealing with this sort of graphic detail that members of the jury want to burst out laughing.”