A police artist drew the likeness after the News of the World tracked down a holidaymaker who reported seeing a "creepy man" hanging around the apartments in Praia da Luz, Portugal, prior to the abduction on May 3 last year.

The photofit shows a man with long hair, bushy eyebrows and a moustache.

Gail Cooper, 50, who was staying in the complex gave a description to an FBI-trained artist of what she called "a creepy man".

Mrs Cooper told the newspaper: "He was wandering about on the beach alone even though it was pouring down with rain. There wasn't another soul about. I watched him for a few minutes before I went back to chatting to my friends."

She said later that day the man knocked on the door of her apartment claiming to be collecting money for charity.

"He flashed what he said was an identity card, but it could have been anything," she said. "The man was rambling and becoming agitated. He really unnerved me even though my two grown-up daughters and two grandchildren were with me. I thought he was a conman trying to pull a fast one."

The McCanns' friend Jane Tanner - who gave a description to police of someone she spotted carrying a child from the Algarve resort on the night Madeleine vanished - told the paper the new picture resembled the man she saw.

The McCanns' spokesman Clarence Mitchell said the image had been passed to police.

A press conference will be held by Mr Mitchell in central London later.