HOW COULD THE BBC DO THIS TO ME?
OF ALL the injustices he’s faced over the past two years, the one that leaves Cliff boiling with rage is the way the BBC treated him — filming the initial police raid on his house and broadcasting it live to the world.
‘I would never have dreamed it would do this to me,’ he says. ‘It would never have even crossed my mind. To me the BBC would absolutely stay by the rules.’
He blames a new wave of management. ‘The new generation have come in, in all fields now, and they seem to have that lack of respect of what’s happened before... A whole new group of people. They don’t care what we’ve done in the past.
‘For me, the BBC is Paul Gambaccini, Gloria [Hunniford] when she worked for them, all the DJs that I’ve met, all the people who work on the Today programme, World At One. That’s the BBC. They are not to blame for what happened to me. It’s the people at the top.
‘Somebody at the top said: “Good idea. Let’s get this story.” And somehow they were able to get the police to tell them when they were coming.
‘It shouldn’t do that. I’m sure that was probably against the law. I always thought a police raid was supposed to be secret.
‘Nobody should know. And yet the BBC were there. So they have a lot to answer for and that was real intrusion into my privacy. To actually film my apartment, it’s unforgivable.’
He is actively considering suing the Corporation, though a final decision is yet to be made.
‘We’re talking about it with the lawyers and at the appropriate time we’ll have made a decision definitely. I do feel that they owe me something.’