He hid himself away for two years of agony
WHO could forget the scene filmed like an action movie by the BBC from a helicopter clattering overhead and by other strategicallyplaced cameras on the ground?
Five cars surrounding Sir Cliff Richard’s Berkshire penthouse and a stream of eight police officers charging in and going through his belongings – all of it broadcast, the dramatic pictures instantly sent around the world.
The South Yorkshire force knew the singer wouldn’t be at home when they tipped off the BBC to be there. He was in Portugal on his Algarve winegrowing estate, completely unaware of what was happening.
Nor did Sir Cliff, then 73, have any idea at the time that he was the subject of an investigation into a historic sexual assault in 1985 against a 15year-old boy.
South Yorkshire had been tipped off by Operation Yewtree, the investigation initially opened into the grisly activities of Jimmy Savile. So began almost two years of ‘agony’.
Yesterday, despite his relief when the Crown Prosecution Service reached the decision to take no further action against him, he was understandably bitter at the use of the phrase ‘insufficient evidence to prosecute’.
Those weasel words said it all. It meant that, from first to last, the veteran entertainer has been shabbily treated by the authorities.
The purpose of the tip-off to the BBC was to maximise publicity, initiating a ‘ fishing expedition’ in which they trawled for additional victims. Just two days after the televised raid, the police announced smugly that ‘a number of people have come forward following the publicity.’
Intriguingly, the file sent to the CPS just a month ago involved allegations by four men. Five others who responded to the call to make historic complaints were discounted.
Such numbers illustrate the worrying dangers of issuing what amounts to a universal invitation for people to make lifechanging complaints about something that may – or may not – have happened many decades ago.
The convictions of stars such as Rolf Harris, Stuart Hall and PR guru Max Clifford on historic charges that they used their celebrity influence to abuse the young and impressionable, are undoubtedly a triumph for justice and will help protect others in the future.
But Cliff Richard is just the latest of many more whose lives have been turned upside down by fantasy allegations after, as he puts it, he was ‘hung out like live bait’.
CORONATIONStreet actor Bill Roache was 81 when acquitted, after a three- week trial, on two counts of rape and five of indecent assault involving five women he said on oath he had never met.
Jimmy Tarbuck, 76, spent almost a year on bail after 14 officers combed through his house on Kingston Hill, Surrey, taking away personal items including diaries, videos and his wife’s computer. He faced what he called ‘false and malicious claims’ from six alleged victims before learning he was being ‘released without charge’.
Jim Davidson was dramatically arrested at Heathrow Airport by officers from Operation Yewtree. As with Sir Cliff, television cameras were there, too, when seven officers arriving in three cars searched his home in Stock- bridge, Hampshire. He was on police bail for 11 months before being told there would be ‘no further action’.
Cliff had been in the police keep-net since August, 2014, until learning yesterday that he was free to go.
Along with the news came a ‘wholehearted’ apology from the South Yorkshire force for their ‘initial handling of the media interest’ in his case. What they mean is, the grubby deal they did with the BBC to give the national broadcaster exclusive access to the raid on the singer’s home.
One is entitled to wonder whether the enthusiastic way this was carried out on the home of Britain’s top-selling solo artist, had anything to do with long- standing, prurient questions about his sexual orientation which, long ago, he fended off with a grin and an anodyne retort.
Apart from protesting his innocence in the strongest terms, Sir Cliff, now 75, has said very little about this frightening episode. Most of his time has been split between the £ 6million beachside home in Barbados – the one he has loaned to Tony and Cherie Blair – and his Algarve vineyard.
Sir Cliff was so affected by the police raid that he couldn’t bear the thought of ever returning to the stunning Art Deco apartment at Sunningdale, which he bought for a reported £3.1million in 2008.
Friends said he was putting it on the market ‘because he feels it’s akin to having your home ransacked by burglars. He truly felt sick when he heard about officers rifling through his personal effects.’
Now he is said to be looking for a new base in England which doesn’t have such ghastly memories.
‘For two years his life’s been on hold – he cancelled everything except six concert nights last November at the Albert Hall, marking his 75th birthday, to which he was contracted,’ said one close friend. ‘It has to be under the kind of dark cloud that envelopes you when such an allegation involving a young person is made. It’s the most terrible of insinuations.’ The nightmare began for the normally gregarious Sir Cliff with a stomach-churning call from a member of his staff looking after his UK apartment.
He quickly learned the police were investigating an allegation of ‘ historical sex abuse’, that sickening, catchall term that in post-Savile Britain has become all-too familiar.
Even as he tried to take it in, news bulletins were revealing how the ‘Peter Pan of Pop’ had become the latest national treasure to be accused of violating a minor. That was all he knew. Nothing more.
ONLYafter making a 15-hour round trip by road and private jet to be voluntarily questioned under caution by South Yorkshire detectives, did he learn the details: a man was alleging a sexual attack, when he was aged 15, at a Christian rally led by the American evangelist Billy Graham at Sheffield United’s football stadium, in 1985.
A moment ago he had been the most contented man on earth. Now he flew home to the Algarve wondering what this would mean for his reputation and for his highly-publicised Christian faith. For a whole month he hid himself
away within its yellow-washed walls in angst-ridden limbo.
Months passed. By February of 2015 he learned that the inquiry had been expanded and now involved more than one allegation, and two more alleged victims. But he hadn’t been charged with anything.
In this half-light existence that is the inevitable consequent of historic sexual allegations, he felt he had to remain in retreat from the public.
Last June, the tennis-mad entertainer was absent from his usual seat on Wimbledon’s Centre Court. It was the first time in 20 years that he hadn’t attended the Championships.
Ten months had passed since the raid on his home.
He spent the winter at his villa in Barbados, keeping fit by playing tennis. But the singer, who was born Harry Webb and has sold more than 250 million records in almost 60 years, was also desperate to keep working.
So he slipped away quietly to America, to record an album in Nashville, but it was not released.
And still he wasn’t charged. Indeed, there was an extraordinary lapse of 15 months after that first voluntary interview following the road and air journey, until he was interviewed again.
By now it was November, 2015, and Sir Cliff was back in Britain – in Barnsley, actually - voluntarily answering South Yorkshire detectives’ questions again.
His answers were roughly the same as they were the first time: the allegations were ‘ completely false, absurd and untrue’ but he would continue to cooperate. Then Cliff, born in Lucknow, India, though raised in Hertfordshire, went out to eat in a local curry restau- rant. Was Cliff Richard bitter by now? At times he certainly looked frail. Who wouldn’t? What we can say is that he prayed for his accusers. We know this because it was revealed by his friend, the veteran disc jockey Paul Gambaccini, 67, who was himself held in limbo for a year on historic sex abuse allegations before being cleared.
On ground the investigation. Why so long? Blame the way Jimmy Savile slipped through the net and the additional opprobrium heaped on South Yorkshire police after it turned the other cheek towards the Asian sex gangs for so many years.
But now it is finally over. Cliff can go on another summer holiday. He’ll certainly be back on the Centre Court at Wimbledon later this month.
And the record? It’ll be released soon. Surely, after what he has been through, he deserves a hit.