Robert Murat, the British expatriate falsely linked to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann in Portugal, has said his life has been “scarred forever” by the tabloid press.

The property consultant, who last year won £600,000 in libel damages for almost 100 “seriously defamatory” stories in British newspapers, was speaking at the Cambridge Union Society in favour of a motion that “the tabloid press does more harm than good”.

In his first public speech on the matter, Murat said the intense press interest in him for eight months turned his home village into a “ghoulish carnival” and “nearly destroyed” his family’s lives.