I FEARED THE LIES WOULD KILL ME
Shatteringly candid. Boiling with rage. Cliff Richard on his two years of hell
FOr Sir Cliff richard, it should have been the happiest of days. It was a sunny morning in Portugal, where he owns a farm and a vineyard, and he was packing for a trip with his sister Joan and some friends to visit associates in the wine world elsewhere in the country. Lunch was planned. Then came a call from his apartment block manager back home in the UK, alerting him to the fact that the police had a warrant to raid his home in Berkshire. Shocked and bewildered, he had no idea what it could be to do with. Why would he have? As a decent, law-abiding citizen, all he thought was that he must help the police with whatever they wanted.
‘I said to him: “Please let them in. I don’t want them smashing the door down because they have the right to do that.”’
He continued packing, ‘but then the phone calls started. This story had broken and it was about this accusation. During the drive to lunch we got calls from various people, from the office, from my family, and they said: “This is what we’ve just seen on the television.”
‘By the time we got to my friends, we had a lunch of sorts, but none of us could eat. I was almost sick with it. It was the most terrible day.’ They stayed the night in a hotel, as planned, and it was here that Cliff watched his home being raided on TV after what he now describes as a ‘collusion’ between the BBC who filmed the raid and the police.
‘That was my introduction to what they were doing and how it looked on the screen. It was really terrifying, really horrible, and of course that’s when I discovered what I was supposedly accused of.’
It was a moment of utter devastation. Cliff was accused of one case of molestation. When the case was publicised, others came forward with similar outrageous allegations.
Today Cliff, 75, is firm as he relives the moment the ‘dark storm’ broke — when he watched his home being raided. ‘I didn’t vomit, but the greatest knot in the stomach arrived.
‘It was like a boulder. You know, you just have that: “God, what is happening to me?” And it’s a fear because it’s slightly the unknown.’
Cliff, along with the rest of us, watched the BBC news footage of police searching his home. ‘I couldn’t see what they were rummaging through because it was through the window into an office area and there were drawers with private things in.
‘So I didn’t know what they were doing. But it was seeing strangers in the house. It was like watching . . .
‘I mean could you imagine watching burglars rummaging around? So that was the first image we saw of it and it added to all the pressure of everything else. But yes, it was not a very nice experience. And it went on to get worse and ruined two years.
‘They weren’t stealing but they were taking my items without my permission. The thing about it is, the police don’t need permission.
‘If they’re investigating and they have a warrant, they can take what they feel is relevant. I still can’t figure out what’s relevant about postcards my mum sent me or a little private note from Princess Diana.’
Still in shock, the party headed back to Cliff ’s Portugal villa first thing the next day to find that all hell had broken loose. The world’s Press were there. Cliff made his way into the safety of his house — where he would stay hidden for two weeks, ‘trapped’ he says.
It was only the day after the raid that the enormity of the accusations against him hit home, and he simply lost the power to stand up straight.
‘That was the moment of my biggest despair. I just collapsed. I couldn’t imagine what depression was like, but I have an idea now. I felt as though I was in this hole and I had no means of getting out.
‘I didn’t know how I could face the future or face my friends or face my family. I was in tears, I have to admit.
‘I was on my knees in tears in the kitchen. I was thinking: “How can I get out of this? How can I ever climb out of this hole.” Somebody got me to my feet and said: “You’ve got to stand up, you are not guilty, hold your head up, you can do it.” ’
Last week, Cliff was in tears again, this time for rather different reasons. He had just heard the news that no charges would be brought against him. After a two-year police investigation, the Crown Prosecution Service had taken just a month to throw out all the allegations against him.
As flimsy as the ‘evidence’ was (‘There wasn’t any evidence. Not a single piece’), Cliff had feared that his Kafkaesque nightmare might end up with him behind bars. ‘I always knew I was innocent, but I always worried I would end up in prison. Or at least having to face a court.’
How did he react when he learned it was all over? ‘I sat on the edge of my bed and wept,’ he says, candidly. ‘I couldn’t help it with all the emotion pent up all that time.’
I have known Cliff for 40 years and today, as we meet at a Surrey hotel to talk about his two years of hell, I can see immediately how the strain and upset has lifted from his face.
And he says he’s actually forgiven his accuser. ‘He probably doesn’t even know I’ve forgiven him, but me forgiving him is not as good as God forgiving him. But only he can ask for that forgiveness.’
One of the biggest potential sex scandals of our age has now passed. His fans can breathe again. Except, as he points out, the law doesn’t erase memories. Nor does the language of the law reassure. ‘Because they don’t say “Chucked out — no evidence”, do they?’ he points out. ‘They say “insufficient evidence”, which to the reader, certainly to me, suggests maybe there is some evidence, but not enough. That’s ridiculous.’ This is Cliff’s first interview, his first full account of his 22-month nightmare, and it is explosive.
His anger, hurt and sheer bewilderment — mostly towards the police and the BBC — is laid bare. He says he is considering suing both the BBC and South Yorkshire police for what they have put him through. He reels off every country in the world in which his name was sullied.
‘My name was smeared in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Spain, France, all over Europe, the Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong, America, Australia, New Zealand.’
Today he also has the air of a man who cannot believe what has happened, or the absurdity of the claims against him. ‘Do you know I was supposed to have molested someone while I was on roller skates?’ he says.
‘Apparently, I roller-skated into a shop, then roller-skated out. Two hours later I returned — still on roller skates — and groped him again. Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous? We fell about with laughter when we heard that.
‘Surely if it were true, he would only have had to push me in the chest and I would have fallen over?’
There was nothing funny about the strain it all has taken on his health, though. He lost weight — ‘and I could ill afford to lose weight’ — and reveals he kept a diary during parts of the past two years, of which one entry reads something like this:
‘I wake up in the mornings now and I feel I am disappearing. I look in the mirror and this other old geezer looks back at me.’
He manages a joke about having to ‘find a surgeon who could just nip and tuck!’ but actually his concern over what this has done to his health goes much deeper than that.
As we meet, he is trying to arrange a series of scans and a ‘full body examination’ because he knows ‘all this’ has weakened him physically. He reveals that at one point — amid the sleeplessness and the torment — he thought he was dying, falling victim to a heart attack or a stroke.
‘I was actually due to be playing tennis the day after the break-in. I play with a pro. I went ahead, but I could hardly lift my arm up. I was told “Just take it gently”, but I couldn’t do that either.
‘I couldn’t understand what was happening to me. I thought I was going to die. I told my coach what had been happening and he said: “Your brain is just not working right and it’s affecting your body.” The stress is physical, not just mental.’
Months later, after the second session of questioning by South Yorkshire police, he had another terrifying episode, which again he links to the stress he was under.
‘I’d bid for, and won, a week at a chateau in France at a charity auction and I went there with some friends, including Gloria Hunniford. On the first day I fell on some stone steps. My teeth went though my lower lip. I had to have eight stitches at the front, 12 on the inside.
‘My hands were in my pockets and I couldn’t get them out in time, so I knew it was serious. I remember watching the blood pour. I think it was to do with the stress, I don’t think I would fall over normally. After this I got shingles, too. I remember
‘The enormity of it hit me and I just collapsed’
my doctor saying: “Stress is a major factor.” ’
Shingles — linked to the chickenpox virus — is recognised by the NHS as one of the most painful conditions anyone can suffer.
Yet even worse than the physical manifestations of being pushed to the edge were the mental ones.
Cliff says he has not slept properly since the raid. The first few nights he got through on sleeping tablets, but he was scared of becoming addicted, so stopped taking them. But his nights have been plagued. Even the night before we meet, he was up at 4am mulling over what has happened, and how he can possibly recover.
‘I’d wake in the middle of the night and just keep going over it. I haven’t had a proper night’s sleep in 22 months,’ he says. ‘I thought I was going crazy, because I found I was talking to myself. Whether I was in the shower or cleaning my teeth, I’m mumbling away in front of the mirror.
‘I phoned Paul Gambaccini [who himself faced lurid and unsubstantiated allegations] and said I’m in the bathroom and I’m talking to myself. He said: “What are you saying?” I told him it was like I was facing a judge or something. He said: “You’re not going crazy, think of it as a rehearsal.”’
Little wonder he feared for his sanity. For only now are the details of the accusations against him (‘accusations that were treated like evidence,’ he says bitterly) emerging, and how flimsy they were.
What a tawdry business from start to finish. One of his accusers turned out to be one of the country’s most dangerous sex offenders. Another is a man who previously tried to blackmail Cliff. His demands were not met and he was reported to the police.
The ‘roller skate guy’, as Cliff calls him, went on to become a religious minister. Lest anyone think that gives him credence as a witness, the ministry offers anyone a chance to ‘become ordained almost immediately’.
Cliff points out: ‘I understand you can be ordained by paying $27 online.’
He is furious that the backgrounds of these men were not further investigated before his name was dragged so unceremoniously through the mud. He still doesn’t understand their motivation, although he has tried hard.
‘Why would they hate me so much that they would do this to me? They must have known the minute they made the accusation what it was going to do to me. Because the police were going to investigate. ‘I can’t figure it out. ‘It’s not as if I had a vicious background. I’m Mr Goody Two-Shoes pop singer. So why did they do this? They are either sick and need help. Or they are being criminal and they want money. They are either deranged, or liars.’
When the whole thing first began, Cliff says he tried to to show Christian forgiveness. ‘I remember thinking perhaps this person maybe thought he’d get compensation. It was the only human reason I could think of.
‘I honestly don’t think I’ve ever met this person. I’m almost certain I have never met him. But my lawyers said when I was answering the police questions I should never say that I hadn’t met him, “because you might have”.
‘That’s true. Over the years I’ve met thousands of people. I’ve met grandparents backstage with their grandchildren. Maybe his mum brought him to a concert and we had a picture taken. I don’t know. I don’t think so, because we would have seen it.’
Cliff is exhausted and elated all at once, but you get the sense from him that this matter is far from over. He tells me his biggest relief in all of this was that his mother had not lived to see this dreadful chapter played out. ‘It would have killed her,’ he says. There was a time where he feared this astonishing saga would kill his career, too, and the love felt for him by his fans.
His anger towards the police and the BBC is matched by his gratitude that the rest of the world appears to have stood beside him.
He has faced no hostility from the British public, he says, and it makes him well up, because he expected it.
‘I’ve walked through airports where I’ve seen a couple of guys walking up with tattoos on their arm and stuff, and I’m thinking: “Oh God. If they think it is true they are going to smash me in the face.” Then they come up and go: “All right, mate! Good on you.”
‘I’ve never had a single person say anything, and that means the world to me.’ But as for putting this whole sorry chapter behind him, he says: ‘It will remain with me for a long, long time.
‘I don’t see how anything like this can ever go back into the memory bank and then be deleted. It can’t possibly happen. I can’t imagine ever forgetting what these people have done to me. It has damaged me in many, many ways.’
‘I was accused of a sex attack on roller skates’