BBC report of police raid on home nearly killed me says tearful Cliff

Cliff Richard broke down yesterday as he told how the BBC had ‘smeared’ his name worldwide and left him fearing a heart attack.

He covered his face and wept as he said his reputation was ‘ forever tainted’ after the broadcaster aired live footage of police searching his home as they investigated a sex assault claim against him.

The 77-year-old singer described how he collapsed on the floor weeping and later feared he would go crazy, or that the stress would trigger a heart attack or stroke.

Sir Cliff said he no longer blamed the police, as he understood they had a duty to investigate, but still blamed the BBC, saying: ‘Everywhere that i have even been, i felt my name was smeared. The police didn’t do that to me, the BBC did.’

He told the High Court in london: ‘it felt as though everything i had done, everything i had built and worked to achieve, was being torn down; like life itself was coming to an end.

‘i felt that the publicity stemming from the BBC’s broadcast had taken away from me what i was, and what i was known as before: a confident and respected artist, and a good ambassador for this country. i felt forever tainted. i still do.’

Sir Cliff said he had been in Portugal at the time of the search and watched BBC coverage at a hotel. ‘i felt confused ... and very upset,’ he said. ‘it was like i was watching burglars in my apartment, going through my personal belongings.’ He is suing the BBC for breach of privacy over its coverage of officers searching his luxury apartment in Sunningdale, Berkshire, in August 2014 following an allegation of a sexual assault.

He said it had damaged his health and his reputation, and had cost him more than £3.4million in legal fees and lost business from records, books and calendars.

Most painful, he said, was the fear that he was being viewed with suspicion wherever he went, which led him to abandon his annual visit to Wimbledon for the first time in 20 years and to cancel plans for a 75th-birthday album. One children’s charity with which he had worked for 25 years wrote to him asking him not to attend a long- standing event, he said, adding: ‘i found this to be embarrassing and really hurtful.’

The singer likened the ordeal to ‘torture, sustained over a period of two years’ and said he had been wrongly portrayed as a sex offender.

Sir Cliff, dressed in a dark navy suit, told a packed courtroom in london his life had been turned upside down without warning when the police search was broadcast.

He said he now accepted the police were doing their job, but that BBC journalists had acted as though they were ‘above the law, above the leveson report [into media standards], above the Magna Carta’.

Sir Cliff told the court he believed his name would not have been linked to the police investigation unless he was charged with a crime, but that everything changed when he was named in the BBC report. He said he had always respected the work of the BBC and had believed they would ‘play by the rules’.

But he was astonished to learn the broadcaster had submitted its coverage to the Royal Television Society’s annual awards for ‘Scoop of the Year’.

‘i was nothing less than flabbergasted by their decision to seek to garner industry awards in respect of a broadcast in which they had treated me with such contempt,’ he said.

The High Court heard that a man went to police in 2013 and claimed he was sexually assaulted as a child by Sir Cliff at an event in Sheffield in 1985.

Sir Cliff denied the allegation and was never arrested, and in 2016 prosecutors said he would face no charges.

After giving evidence, he walked to the back of the courtroom and hugged his close friend and confidante Gloria Hunniford, breaking down into tears. His long time companion John McElynn, a former priest, was also in the courtroom to support him.

Sir Cliff ’ s lawyers have argued that the BBC had no legal justification for the invasion of his privacy, and are seeking damages.

South Yorkshire Police, whose officers undertook the raid and spoke to the BBC about the story, has already apologised and will pay Sir Cliff ‘substantial’ damages of more than £400,000.

The BBC says it had a right to report the raid in the public interest and that Sir Cliff’s legal challenge is a threat to freedom of speech. it said it had reported his ‘full denial of the allegations at every stage’.

‘I felt forever tainted. I still do’