He hates his sticky-up hair and botox made his eyebrows collapse - new light cast on enigmatic Cliff Richard

11 April 2012
The Weekender

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PENNY JUNOR spent months with Cliff Richard ghosting his new autobiography and her intimate recollections cast new light on this enigmatic star.

Sir Cliff Richard's house in Barbados is sumptuous. It's where Tony Blair took his family several times when he was Prime Minister.

Cliff's never voted Labour in his life but he saw Tony on the news one night during the invasion of Iraq – at a time when the PM was one of the two greatest terrorist targets in the world – and thought he looked in need of a holiday.

Cliff convert: Penny Junor with Cliff Richard visiting projects in Brazil while ghosting his new autobiography

Cliff convert: Penny Junor with Cliff Richard visiting projects in Brazil while ghosting his new autobiography

Cliff was horrified when he opened a newspaper and saw an aerial photo of the house in glorious Technicolor, helpfully pinpointing the target for anyone keen to blow up Mr Blair.

Cliff was concerned about the PM's safety of course, but he had just spent three years creating his dream home and filling it with exotic and beautiful things.

Like so much about Cliff's life, it was intimate, personal and private.

Coral Sundown is a dream house. It is hidden behind electric gates, in a secure community in the hills above St James on the fashionable west coast – with breathtaking views of the Caribbean.

It was where I had to go, as ghost writer for Cliff's autobiography, to ensure a few days of his undivided attention. Some hardships just have to be endured.

Having negotiated security at the main gate and the intercom at the gate to Coral Sundown, my taxi pulled up outside the front of the house where Cliff was waiting.

Just Cliff; dressed casually in a T-shirt and cut-off jeans, looking tanned and fit and at least 20 years younger than his 67 years.

He held my shoulders and gave me a kiss on both cheeks and immediately took my suitcase and carried it into the house.

Commitment: Cliff meets five-year-old Jose Carvalho de Moraes during his trip to Brazil with Tearfund

Commitment: Cliff meets five-year-old Jose Carvalho de Moraes during his trip to Brazil with Tearfund

I was expecting the house to be teeming with staff but there was no one. All he has is a gardener and a housekeeper, Jasmin, but since it was Sunday, she was off, so he made the tea.

And when Cilla Black, who has an apartment in the town, came to join us for supper, Cliff was the one who opened the champagne for drinks beforehand and he was the one who laid the table and organised the food. Jasmin had made us a quiche and Cliff put together a salad, with a bottle or two of Vida Nova from his vineyard in Portugal.

It was a very jolly evening – just four of us: Cliff, John McElynn, his property manager, who was staying in the house, Cilla and me. Cliff has known Cilla since the Sixties but it is only since he built his house in Barbados that he has come to know her well.

They are now very good friends and he had invited her specially, knowing that she and I already knew one another. John had driven into the town to collect her and drove her home again after dinner.

Cliff is very careful of his guests, wanting everything to be just right for them, and it is. It was a fun evening with a lot of banter, storytelling and laughter. He is enormously domesticated – a hang-over from his childhood when he and his sisters had to clean the house after school each day while their parents worked.

He hasn't needed to do any housework for 50 years but he still has to stop himself polishing the glass table-top if he sees a smear or doing last night's washing-up before Jasmin arrives in the morning.

I was staying in a little cottage at the end of the drive (where Tony Blair's bodyguards used to stay) and Cliff and John had prepared it between them. They had cleaned it from top to bottom, they had made the bed and been to the supermarket down in St James to stock up with things they thought I might need.

There was orange juice and bottled water in the fridge, eggs, butter, milk, bread, muesli and some fruit.

Was there anything else I might need? I had forgotten a hairdryer so Cliff lent me one of his, and also a couple of CDs to play – his, at my request. He thought I would enjoy his latest album of duets, Two's Company, and Something's Goin' On, from 2004, which he thinks is the best album he's made in years. 

Coral Sundown is opulent: it's everything you expect of a rock star's house and the garden is a riot of tropical colour. Gardening is one of Cliff's passions.

Among the flowers and trees, theatrically lit by night, are sculptures. Two giant bronze Great Danes sit on their haunches watching the gate, and elephants, only slightly smaller than life, stand idly on the lawn, near the drive, that leads to the tennis court – where he plays two or three times a week.

There is more sculpture round the pool and still more inside the house, much of it, like the furnishings, imported from the other side of the world – things such as a big golden Buddha that Cliff found and fell in love with during his travels and had shipped to the Caribbean.

On the road: Cliff, propped beside Bill Latham, plays the guitar during the eight-hour bus ride in Brazil

On the road: Cliff, propped beside Bill Latham, plays the guitar during the eight-hour bus ride in Brazil

The floors are marble, and white, like the walls, which gives a great feeling of space and light – and it's built for comfort. He admits it's the most luxurious home he's ever had and it is quite clearly his pride and joy.

He genuinely delights in my admiration, just as he genuinely delights in compliments about anything he's responsible for.

He is not blase – he does not behave as though he thinks he's a superstar – in fact, he's surprisingly humble.

But Cliff is a perfectionist, as this house bears testimony. If a painting is askew he will straighten it and if he notices that a light fitting is not quite central over the dining table, he'll fret.

While I was there he was having trouble with an awning over the terrace that was listing to one side but John had found a man to fix it (no mean feat in Barbados) and Cliff was delighted.

It is this obsessive attention to detail, I suspect, that is partly responsible for his extraordinary longevity in the pop world.

He is the first to say that there are plenty of others in the business who can sing him under the table. Yet he's the one celebrating his 50th anniversary this year and who's had a No1 in every decade he's been singing.

His own band members say they have never worked with anyone like him. Even after all these years, he treats every concert tour as if it was his first. He rehearses for six weeks before the opening night; he is always the first one to the venue and last to leave.

He gets involved in every aspect of his shows from lighting to choreography and spends months beforehand deciding what songs to sing, relearning those from the past, and deciding a running order.

Icon: Cliff Richard on stage

Icon: Cliff Richard on stage

He has sleepless nights in the run-up, afraid he won't remember the words. And if on the first night he feels he's got it wrong, he'll change the order until he knows he's taking the audience with him.

Cliff has a fan base most artists would give an arm and a leg for. His concerts sell out within days; fans camp outside the box office. But if I said the average age was 60, it wouldn't be far off the mark. They have followed him faithfully for years. He's been there at all the major events in their lives.

Their memories are triggered by his songs – teenage parties, first kisses, love affairs, marriages and births and many have become friends through his fan clubs or meeting at concerts.

He likes that and is touched by how loyal they are. When a radio station said it wasn't going to play his music any more, fans demonstrated outside the building; and when damaging articles appear in the papers, fans are quick to say they don't believe a word.

Cliff is furious that radio stations can arbitrarily decide that their listeners are not Cliff fans and refuse to play his music. Some won't even accept his advertising. And he's deeply hurt by so many journalists, who appear friendly but seem determined to make a fool of him. It's easy to do.

He is not the most worldly of men, which is hardly surprising since he has been cocooned by fame since the age of 17. He isn't prepared for people to be impolite or to try to con him. He takes most of what he reads and hears at face value. He has no guile. He is honest, open and trusting, maybe too much for his own good, and to cynics in the media it is all too easy to make him sound naive.

I had never been to a Cliff concert. I probably hadn't bought a Cliff record since the early Sixties, shortly before I discovered The Beatles. It wasn't because I was a fan that I leapt at the opportunity to ghost his book. It was because I was intrigued.

How had this squeaky-clean man survived for so long in a world that is fuelled by excess? Rock 'n' roll is synonymous with drugs, sex and alcohol – indulgence, decadence – and he indulged in none of it. Or did he?

People have been speculating about his sexuality for five decades – determined to be able to brand him gay. But it has remained, to his ineffable joy, an enigma. Any whiff of homosexuality in the early years could have been the end of his career – because it was illegal.

By the time the law was changed Cliff was a committed Christian, so sex of any sort outside marriage was heavily frowned upon. He came close to marrying two women: Jackie Irving, who went on to marry Adam Faith, and Sue Barker of tennis and TV fame, who is now married to policeman Lance Tankard.

And Cliff has shared a house with two men – Bill Latham, the former religious education teacher who introduced him to God in the mid-Sixties and has been his right-hand man at work for more than 30 years, and John McElynn, whom he has known since 2000.

Make of it what you will. What is certain is that no one has ever crawled out of the woodwork to claim a liaison, which if he had been sexually active would have happened.

My own view is he is married to his career, nothing gives him a greater buzz than being Cliff Richard.

My first meeting with him was in a hotel in Weybridge, Surrey. Before committing myself to ghosting his book, I wanted to be sure I could spend the next 18 months with the man – not literally, of course.

But to do the job well, I needed to know what it felt like to be him, and to understand what makes him laugh and cry, angry, happy, frightened and sad.

Enduring popularity: Cliff in the film Wonderful Life back in 1964

Enduring popularity: Cliff in the film Wonderful Life back in 1964

We met for tea and on the dot of 4pm he walked into the foyer with Bill Latham.

Bill is like an older brother to Cliff. He is calm and relaxed, with a wry sense of humour. He's not at all flash. He looks and acts a little like the teacher he once was, who has seen everything and knows exactly what is likely to happen next – and how best to deal with it.

I was faintly worried about the Christianity – not being particularly of that persuasion. And, of course, immediately, like a moth drawn to the light, went into a long explanation about how my 'bloody' TomTom  satnav was useless.

Neither man turned a hair. I discovered to my joy, Cliff does not ram Christianity down your throat. He prefers people not to swear in front of him but if you want to know about his faith you have to jolly well ask.

What struck me first about Cliff was how open and friendly he was, how unstarry. He has charisma, but he doesn't have arrogance. He talks about himself very honestly and is perpetually self-deprecating – quick to laugh at himself.

There's no question Cliff cares about his looks – if he didn't, would women have been swooning over him for 50 years? On that first meeting he told me he had kept his weight down since his teens by eating only one meal a day – and yet he really enjoys good food and cooks enthusiastically.

To have had the discipline to deny himself the comfort and pleasure of three meals a day or the odd chocolate bar for all those years is almost unimaginable. But that is typical of his utter dedication to, and love of, being Cliff Richard.

He was beautiful in his youth and still looks amazing. He has had no surgery. He tried Botox a few times but it made his eyebrows collapse, he laughs – and he puts low-lights in his hair.

People have been speculating about Cliff's sexuality for five decades but he remains an enigma

People have been speculating about Cliff's sexuality for five decades but he remains an enigma

His hair is the one thing he hates about himself – he's never liked it and can't bear it when he takes a bow on stage and notices from his shadow that a bit is sticking up.

He is smaller and slighter than I was expecting but he is as fit as a flea, with a definite spring to his step.

His body is amazingly well toned and tanned. He spends so much of his year abroad, chasing the sun, that the colour never fades. He tops it up regularly on a lounger by the pool but he is disciplined in the length of time he spends in the sun, as in everything.

Discipline runs through him like letters through seaside rock. And nothing brings him alive quite like talking about his passions, of which his work is no doubt the greatest.

Every day for four days in Barbados, Cliff arrived at my little cottage on the dot of 10am and we sat and talked solidly until lunch at 1pm.

We did another three hours in the afternoon – and no subject was off limits. Lunch was either something Jasmin had prepared, like an omelette and salad, eaten on the terrace, with a glass of wine, or he'd mix a rum punch, or he would drive us into town in his Mercedes and we'd eat in a crowded bar on the beach. He always opened the car door for me.

He was on a new diet. After all these years of only one meal a day, a masseuse had suggested he could lose the fleshy bits around his hips if he tried the blood type diet, which categorises foods as 'beneficial', 'neutral' or 'to be avoided' according to your blood group.

It means he's had to give up all sorts of foods that he loves – red meat, wheat, dairy, potatoes, tomatoes, mangos and papaya – but it's a small price to pay for being able to eat properly again and provided he doesn't eat an 'avoid' food more than once a fortnight, he can break the rules from time to time.

Finding dishes he can eat in restaurants can be a bit of a nightmare but discovering this diet has changed his life. He is eating more than ever, losing weight, and has never felt fitter in mind or body.

This obsession about his weight is matched by a preoccupation about his health. He lives with the constant fear of catching a cold or flu or anything that will prevent him singing.

He looks after his throat and vocal cords, takes regular exercise and sleeps for eight hours a night. In anyone else it could be hypochondria but for 50 years Cliff has been selling his voice, his vitality and his looks – and if he loses them, he loses his livelihood.

Touring exhausts him but it pleases the fans and is what generates the income these days. He can be on the road for up to six months and in that time he can't eat during the day before a performance because singing after food makes him burp, so he eats late at night.

He has no qualms about his age per se, but his is a young person's business. A few years ago he made the album Something's Goin' On In Nashville – which the US head of Universal loved and wanted to release.

Before going ahead he said he needed to get the agreement of his sales team. They loved it. Who, they wanted to know, was the artist? When they discovered Cliff was in his 60s, they turned it down saying they couldn't market someone of that age. He knows he can't fight it but rock 'n' roll is his life and he's not about to fold his tent yet. 

Cliff performs at the Golden Jubilee pop party for the Queen at Buckingham Palace in 2002

Cliff performs at the Golden Jubilee pop party for the Queen at Buckingham Palace in 2002

But there's another side to Cliff Richard, which I saw in the baking, dusty fields and the shanty towns of Brazil. T

his is the side that earned him his knighthood. For the past 40 years he has given swathes of his money to charity, in particular the evangelical Christian charity Tearfund (of which he is vice-president) that raises funds for relief in the Third World. He was at the height of his fame, in 1973, when he made his first trip with it to war-torn Bangladesh.

The charity was in its infancy, and Cliff was so moved he contemplated giving up showbusiness for aid work.

'Can you give an injection?' asked one of the nurses.  'No,' said Cliff. 'Then we don't need you here.'

And he was persuaded it would be more effective to use his fame to raise money and awareness – and to leave qualified people to do the relief work.

Today, in some part thanks to Cliff, Tearfund is huge. It has an annual income of £50million, and every couple of years he spends a week or so with it, travelling to a crisis area.

Having seen Cliff in Barbados, surrounded by the spoils of fame, I was fascinated to know how he would cope out of his comfort zone. So I went to Brazil with him. A crew from Songs Of Praise were also there, making a film about Cliff, to be shown in December.

First stop was the city of Recife, where AIDS and child prostitution is being tackled.

After several days there, we took an eight-hour bus ride to visit smallholdings in a semi-arid region. It was an eye-opener.

There was no red carpet for Cliff. We all got tired and fed-up on the bus – he and I talked for some of the time, he played the guitar a bit, read his book and slept.

We all ate together, all stayed in the same very basic hotels. In one we had to make our own beds, buy soap and share hairdryers, and Cliff would always muck in with the rest of us.

He piled into dodgy taxis with us, drank wine that tasted of cough mixture and stood, bare-headed, in the midday sun patiently allowing the Songs Of Praise director to do one more take, long after everyone else had fled for water and shade. I never heard him complain. He just laughed.

For someone who is so fastidious, stepping over channels of raw sewage – the smells ripened by the heat – to reach a series of dingy, fly-infested hovels must have been a real trial.

But he did it with good cheer and was quick to sit on the bed next to a crippled child or to embrace the figure emaciated by AIDS.

I was amazed by his prowess at football. He was asked if he'd like to play a game with a group of nine or ten-year-olds on a concrete pitch in the middle of the afternoon, when the temperatures were close to 100F (38C). He scored five goals and was the first to say the match was rigged.

But the pleasure as he high-fived his young team-mates was touching.

They don't know Cliff in this part of the world but in Brazil music and dance transcends any language problems. He was in his element, and whether he was sitting in the road with slum kids, beating a make-shift drum, joining in with dancers or singing Summer Holiday, everyone adored him.

One little boy clung to Cliff's leg and refused to let go and Cliff was touched by such affection.

My favourite image of the trip was Cliff sitting in a scruffy transport cafe in the sweltering heat, flies everywhere, after six hours on the road in this bus, stoically eating a granola bar he had brought with him. He had seen the lunch on offer and while he was happy to sit at the table and watch others dice with salmonella, he was taking no chances.

He is better known in North America but still not widely recognised there, which is one reason he bought an apartment in New York a few years ago – to enjoy a bit of privacy. The recognition level elsewhere is extraordinary.

Every time I've been with him in public he's been accosted. People want photos or signatures, or just to tell him how wonderful he is, but they're demanding.

They barge in when he's in the midst of a conversation or has a mouthful of food or is trying to shop or simply walk down a street, and because he is so nice and polite he obliges.

He has never had a bodyguard but he likes to have someone with him who can say: 'Come on, Cliff, time to go.' That person used to be Bill Latham. He and Cliff shared a house until about eight years ago, when Bill and his girlfriend moved out. But for many years he was company for Cliff both professionally and privately.

Bill is still indispensable as a manager and friend.

John McElynn is his principal companion these days. He doesn't play a major part in his professional life but is usually there when Cliff's off-duty. He's a fellow tennis enthusiast and a former Catholic priest, whom Cliff met in 2000 when he took a year out to re-evaluate his life and career.

John now administers all Cliff's properties, writes emails for him and deals with day-to-day domestic problems when Cliff's abroad.

The relationship has put a few noses out of joint and I was aware of stories in the Press about John, blaming his influence on Cliff for all manner of ills. I saw no such influence at work.

John may be a strong character, but he didn't seem to be calling the shots – and Cliff has never been a pushover. People have long confused meek with weak about Cliff. I would attribute the change in him to the year 2000 and his re-evaluation of his life, a shift in priorities.

Cliff doesn't like to be alone and John is a good friend and companion – and the one who can use a computer – but it is Cliff who is driving the change.

The older he gets the less he likes the cold and damp of England, perhaps a consequence of having spent the first seven years of his life in India. So he has downsized in this country, selling his mansion in Weybridge and buying a smaller bungalow on the nearby Wentworth Estate.

He returns for concerts and special occasions and is here for the whole of Wimbledon but spends four months in Barbados during the winter and most of the summer in Portugal.

Any time in between is either spent visiting friends or in New York.
There is no doubt his office staff and some old friends are aggrieved that they see less of him than they used to, and he is enjoying a more glamorous lifestyle.

He used to share his dining table with middle-class professionals. These days they are more likely to be billionaires and celebrities but the Caribbean lends itself to that.

As he says, we've all heard the phrase 'how the other half lives'. He always thought of himself as 'the other half' until he went to Barbados where his own fortune pales.

It's a very sociable place and he is enjoying being part of it. In some ways, he's never been happier.

I have come away from working with Cliff a convert, a complete fan. I even love his music. But mostly I love the man. He is a complete gentleman with manners from a different, more courteous era, astonishing for someone who has had doors opened for him and people bowing and scraping for 50 years.

He always opened doors for me, always stood back to allow me to go first, always stood up when I came into a room; and he is always, always on time.

All of this is the result of a rather Victorian upbringing and a strict father who once locked him out of the house in the middle of the night to teach him a lesson about being late.

Cliff reminds me of John Major, whose biography I wrote. He too had had a much older father with Victorian attitudes and he too has impeccable manners and the ability to make everyone feel he is pleased to meet them. It is a very endearing trait and unusual in both politicians and celebrities.

John Major, like Cliff, left school feeling under-educated and made up for it by paying phenomenal attention to detail and working infinitely harder than his colleagues. They are both, genuinely, very nice men who have been sneered at and under-appreciated. 

Neither man is as bland as portrayed. Cliff had a fleeting tantrum about the title for the book on our last day in Brazil, when he was at a photo session, which he never much enjoys.

It passed, and we ended up friends – with a title neither of us had thought of.

I suspect if Cliff were run over by the proverbial bus tomorrow, he too would suddenly acquire a new improved status. In the meantime, he has to put up with being seen as Mr Nice Guy. I can't help thinking this says more about us than it does about him.

© Penny Junor, 2008. My Life, My Way, by Cliff Richard with Penny Junor, is published by Headline Review at £20. To order a copy for £18 with free p&p, call the Review Bookstore on 0845 155 0713.

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