I wouldn’t wish BBC ordeal on my worst enemy
Sir Cliff opens up on ‘four terrible years’
SIR Cliff Richard says the BBC ‘destroyed’ him by screening a police raid on his home amid historical child sex abuse claims.
The BBC named the singer as the subject of the investigation, which was dropped two years later without him being arrested or charged.
Speaking about the ordeal in a TV interview with Jonathan Ross to be shown on ITV1 tomorrow, Sir Cliff, 78, said: ‘I’ve had four terrible years and it was horrific. I would never wish that on my worst enemy. It was tumultuous, horrific, emotionally draining, traumatic... Thank God for friends and thank God for God.’
He described the moment in 2014, while in Portugal, he heard police were at his Berkshire flat: ‘It was very intrusive. It’s hard to explain to people what it feels like. I only went back to that apartment once, to collect my clothes. It was worse than being burgled.
‘In the end it was just heartbreaking for me that anyone would even think it possible for that accusation to be true... There was no substance to it and that’s what makes it so ugly. What the BBC did... was unlawful. The only thing that TV and Radio Reporter anybody knew, and I knew, was that there had been an accusation. There had been no investigation yet.
‘It was very unfair. I can understand someone saying, “Well we didn’t know whether he was guilty or not”. Well if you don’t know, you shouldn’t say anything.’ In July, the High Court ruled that the BBC should not have named Sir Cliff and awarded him £210,000 damages and £850,000 in costs for a ‘very serious’ invasion of privacy.
Sir Cliff said: ‘It’s funny because right at the beginning, I only asked for an apology. We needn’t have gone through all of this money that both of us groups spent if they had just apologised. I wasn’t really suing the BBC, it was the upper echelon who had made very bad decisions and now they realise they have made very bad decisions and destroyed me for a couple of years.’
Sir Cliff, who appeared on the show to promote his new album, quoted from one of the songs, Rise Up: ‘You’re never going to break me down, you’re never going to take me down you know I’m going to rise up stronger.’