The Sunday Post: A Confirmed Bachelor Boy
Watching ‘Wolf Hall’ this week, I was reminded of how Thomas Cromwell settled a few old scores when inventing evidence to condemn the luckless Anne Boleyn to a date with the executioner. He trawled through a list of cocky courtiers and selected several guilty men – not, as he admitted, guilty of the crime that would lose them their heads; but ones he knew had either got away with past misdemeanours or that he simply didn’t care for. Henry VIII demanded a trial that would prove his Queen’s unfaithfulness, so Cromwell picked a bunch of fall guys to justify his master’s desire to get his hands on Jane Seymour.
Most of the parallels between then and now that have arisen from ‘Wolf Hall’ have centred around the similarities between Christianity then and Islam now – violent disagreements over interpretations of religious ideology, the same religious ideology; and the brutal punishments dished-out to heretics/infidels, specifically beheadings and burning alive. But what struck me watching the final episode of the saga was the manner in which Thomas Cromwell had to fabricate proof of a crime that hadn’t been committed; and how he successfully constructed a case against an innocent party that convinced the people who were all too happy to bay for her blood.
This to me has as much of a ring of contemporary familiarity about it as any faith-based brutality on display.
At the very point when serious questions were being asked as to the level and legality of collusion between the BBC and the South Yorkshire Police over the melodramatic raid of Cliff Richard’s home last year, the loathsome constabulary with a record of crooked ineptitude matched only in recent years by the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad abruptly uttered those magic words ‘more victims have come forward’. What convenient timing for them that was; good old victims, eh? You can always rely on them to emerge from the shadows (no pun intended, Sir Cliff!) that they’ve been hiding in for three or four decades right at the very moment when the case against their alleged abuser needs them.
Flashback to the late summer of 1979 – I’m at my grandma’s house and ‘We Don’t Talk Anymore’ is No.1 on ‘Top of the Pops’. As so often happened when the programme was viewed with a mixed range of ages, a running commentary accompanied it, passing judgement on each act to grace the stage. When Cliff appeared, the one observation that was new to me then emanated from my auntie. ‘Some say he’s queer, y’know.’ Amazingly, Cliff had already been a household name for twenty-one years at that distant date, and though my ears hadn’t previously been exposed to rumours around the Peter Pan of Pop’s peccadilloes, no doubt such stories had been in circulation long before I became aware of them.
When Cliff first appeared as Britain’s ‘answer to Elvis Presley’, a married pop star was the kiss of death to a career whose prime source of support was hormonal teenage girls; even John Lennon had to pretend he was single during the outset of Beatlemania. Although it later transpired Cliff had engaged in a brief affair with the wife of original Shadows bassist, the uber-cool Jet Harris, whatever romantic involvements characterised his early years of fame were largely conducted in private and not the public eye. Una Stubbs, Olivia Newton-John and (more publicly) Sue Barker all presented possible marriage material as Cliff outgrew his teen idol beginnings and morphed into an all-round entertainer, but none overrode his commitment to his career – or his gradual commitment to Christianity.
At the height of the psychedelic era, when the only religion pop stars endorsed was unorthodox eastern philosophy – as personified by the Beatles’ giggling guru, the Maharishi – Cliff’s abrupt embrace of traditional (and unfashionable) Christian values was inspired by attending a rally hosted by the evangelical orator Billy Graham. For many years, his record sales went into a steep decline as a consequence. And while pop music became more adventurous and arty, Cliff’s willingness to take the Eurovision path to oompah-oompah land didn’t help either. Another factor that certified his estrangement from contemporary mores was his association with the Festival of Light movement in the early 1970s, a Christian coalition of moral do-gooders led by the likes of Mary Whitehouse, Malcolm Muggeridge and Lord Longford. If there is any long-lasting legacy of this challenging phase of Cliff’s career, it is his barely publicised and generous philanthropy as he continues to donate a large majority of his earnings to charitable causes.
Christian, teetotal, drug-free, philanthropic, and seemingly averse to the temptations of the female flesh – Cliff was hardly adhering to the 70s pop star manual. In some respects, his defiant rejection of the clichés that characterised the decade’s debauched desperadoes made Cliff virtually radical, an anachronistic oddity in opposition to the prevailing trends. He was easy to mock, a whiter-than-white establishment eunuch who refused to apologise for what he believed in. It’s no wonder his equally sexually ambivalent celibate heir, Morrissey, felt a kinship and later invited him to be a support act. But in age obsessed with the sexual proclivities of pop icons, Cliff’s eternal singleton status seemed too good to be true. He had to be hiding something, surely?
In the 70s, and especially the 80s, the ‘queer’ label was the one usually applied to anyone who wouldn’t state publicly which way their libido leaned. When a rash of celebrities rushed out of the closet, Cliff remained rigid in his reluctance to discuss his private life; refusing to play the game didn’t go down well with the media, which made the inevitable question a predictable moment of every in-depth interview he gave. As the gay express trundled towards civil partnerships and eventual marriage, however, the quaint concept of a household name keeping quiet about his homosexuality was rendered irrelevant; if Cliff’s secrecy couldn’t be attributed to queer tendencies, therefore, it had to mask the deviation that had superseded the lavatory cowboy as society’s sexual bogeyman.
Unlike many, Sir Cliff Richard is not a man who has indulged in the hedonistic perks of pop’s Holy Grail, which are often entered into by those with an inkling their moment in the spotlight will be brief; he has been scoring hit records since 1958 and has resisted the self-destructive urges that have served to wreck numerous short-lived careers by pacing himself for longevity. In the process, he has earned the enmity of many along the way due to his being ‘a bit weird’; this used to be a plus where pop stars were concerned, though not now. Just as small minds inhibited by an awareness of their own insignificance cannot accept that a non-nobleman from the Midlands could have penned the world’s greatest canon of theatrical works or that science was able to achieve the pinnacle of placing a man on the moon, they instinctively mistrust somebody who has been in the public eye for over half-a-century and yet has managed to keep a lid on his private life; he simply has to be covering-up a sordid secret.
When Detective Sergeant Norman Pilcher of the Yard embarked upon a moral crusade to clean-up Swinging London in the late 60s, he began by busting pop stars lower down the pecking order before finally working his way up to the Fab Four. His Yewtree successors have followed the same path, but they are probably unaware that Pilcher’s vendetta concluded with him receiving a four-year sentence for perverting the course of justice. And, lest we forget, Thomas Cromwell himself met the same fate as Anne Boleyn just four years after the Queen of England lost her head. But by seeking to change history, one cannot learn from it.
Petunia Winegum
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March 1, 2015 at 10:31 am -
The ‘Festival of Light’ fandango also coincided with his ‘BBC Light Ent’ phase – and it is possibly the catalyst for his exile into the ‘credibility wilderness’. As previously highlighted https://annaraccoon.com/2015/01/11/the-auntie-fascists/ the sweepers of the ‘new broom’ of the late 1970s brought with them not just an over-riding faux-socialist ideology and insistence that politics should be centre-stage in pop music but also deep-rooted middle-class resentment of their elders – especially those elders who didn’t fit into their agenda.
Born-again Christianity was deeply uncool in the 1960s, but it wasn’t until the private school politico’s decided they wanted pop music to promote their causes that the divisions began – in the early 1970s, the NME was still the New Musical Express and was represented by ‘old guard’ such as Maurice Kinn, giving awards to Cliff for best male singer, Top Of The Pops for best TV Programme and to Jimmy Savile for ‘best DJ’ but by the late 70s it had become a completely different animal. From thereon it was ‘us and them’ and all your ‘regular’ pre-1976 entertainers were firmly in the ‘them’ camp. -
March 1, 2015 at 10:43 am -
This Channel 4 documentary from 2003 (before that channel went really downhill) is very interesting – it does as advertised for once and looks at ‘The Real Cliff Richard’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcYd_pE7d4c
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March 1, 2015 at 10:46 am -
You do realise that by publishing that photo of Cliff Richard with Savile you may well have set off a chain of events, maybe a dozen demented “victims” coming forward and accusing Savile of procuring them for him to rape?
http://news.wikinut.com/The-Cliff-Richard-Outrage/2b4e2kpg/
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March 1, 2015 at 11:07 am -
Cliff is different in another way. He has real money and, should there be a need to defend himself, he will have access to the best lawyers for the job. Why are they pursuing him? I’m no fan of his. My musical awareness started properly in the early 70’s which was a very different place to be from now. No one is going to condone child abuse but things were different back then.
Puritanism is never a good thing. Time may be on our side if we live long enough. There is bound to be a backlash.
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March 1, 2015 at 12:21 pm -
Enforcing puritanism on others is never a good thing. However, if Sir Cliff has chosen a form of puritanism for himself, that’s his business and should be nobody else’s; it’s only feeding the voracious appetite for sleazy personal detail of the celeb-obsessed hard-of-thinking that makes his sexuality or sexual choices a matter for public discourse, sadly.
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March 1, 2015 at 2:57 pm -
Rolf Harris didn’t? Rolf Harris wasn’t?
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March 1, 2015 at 6:39 pm -
Blame it on his extra leg
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March 1, 2015 at 11:32 am -
“What convenient timing for them…”
Spot. On.
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March 1, 2015 at 11:46 am -
Another good piece. Excellent work Petunia!
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March 1, 2015 at 11:59 am -
John Travolta is another whom the “rumour-mill” has often cast as a gay who won’t come out.
Nowadays he’s “creepy” around women “half his age… or younger!”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/26/middlebrow-john-travolta_n_6748146.html
Presumably Scientology=Freemasonry over there so let’s get a night fever, night fever going! -
March 1, 2015 at 12:12 pm -
It’s strange how all those female groupies have stopped boasting.
Cynthia Plaster Caster apparently didn’t cross to this side of the pond.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynthia_Plaster_Caster
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March 1, 2015 at 12:16 pm -
Ah for the days of the stratocaster
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March 1, 2015 at 12:29 pm -
Something else you could play with, that came with strings attached.
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March 1, 2015 at 5:12 pm -
Not to mention a wah-wah pedal… allegedly
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March 1, 2015 at 1:46 pm -
They seem to pick and choose elderly celebrities, but I am rather surprised they are going after Cliff who has an army of fans and plenty of money. I hope he sues them all. I was never a fan but this is madness. When are they going after the real big names who must have had more girls, some under age, than all the rest put together, I want to know why they seem to be immune.
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March 1, 2015 at 2:18 pm -
Show ends at 11 pm. Time you’ve got off-stage and your gear rounded up, it’s half-past, at least. Any girls hanging around would be assumed to of age, otherwise how are they getting home? Nobody carried ID back then anyway, so how are you going to tell? Ask them what time they have to be at school in the morning?
One of my mates roadied for quite a few top bands of the time. He told me staggering stories of the sorts of things these girls would get up to to reach their idols, not fit to utter in the Arms. A favourite trick was to stay too late at the gig, then claim you’d missed your last train home. The better-looking ones sometimes got a ride in the roadies’ van….
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March 1, 2015 at 2:49 pm -
Very true, there was a time when I would have climbed over hot coals to get to my idol who shall remain nameless! My friend and I once went to the local airport for just another glimpse, unfortunately we didn’t have any money to get home but the airport bus took pity on us. We were about 14 at the time and relatively innocent but who knows what would have happened given a chance. The intensity of teenage crushes is incredible.
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March 1, 2015 at 5:12 pm -
Bu not Cliff I don’t suppose….
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March 1, 2015 at 5:41 pm -
Definitely not Cliff, I liked Living Doll but can’t think of anything else. Two years ago I had an MRI and as it is very noisy they offer to play music so I asked for something from the 60s. Imagine my horror when they played Cliff singing Summer Holiday which I hated more than most of his songs. No escape, I had to suffer it and preferred the noise of the machine. I will ask for classical if there is a next time.
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March 1, 2015 at 5:50 pm -
I recall that when he came out with “Devil Woman” there were many who called him a hypocrite because, “he’s supposed to be Christian and this is like, about a sexy woman!!..” Poor sod never stood a chance. Xmas was all he had left…
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March 3, 2015 at 10:48 am -
Mrs R teaches music. When she had a scan a few years back for an ongoing and mysterious sinus problem, they didn’t offer to play anything, and she said the only way she could cope with the noise was to consciously identify the indivudal tones she was hearing – deconstructing the sound into managable pieces, as it were.
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March 1, 2015 at 3:01 pm -
This guy is my all-time favourite; I’ve seen him six times
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fI5b8r25_w
the acoustic version is far better; I just hope they don’t arrest him when he arrives in the UK shortly.
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March 1, 2015 at 4:04 pm -
Not a Cliff fan but I’m praying more ‘VICTIMS’ will BRAVELY come forth…and Sir Cliff will go all Alexander Economou on them. By targeting CR the Victimologists may have just gone too far, unlike JS, CLiff IS genuinely adored by a huge chunk of the population and his public vest has been Persil for decades. Can anyone really imagine any British jury finding CR guilty of anything but abusing the tone scale? He also has the money to bring as many private prosecutions as he wants afterwards.
Some VICTIM somewhere may just have bitten off more than they can chew.
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March 1, 2015 at 5:54 pm -
If the CPS get him in the Hanging Assizes at Southwark Cliff’ll be a goner. They could get Jesus Christ convicted in that hell-hole. “Funny how that Jesus never married innit?”
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March 1, 2015 at 5:02 pm -
I was at the Billy Graham rally at Bramhall Lane in 1985. Am readying my claim for compensation as we speak.
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March 1, 2015 at 5:13 pm -
Hallelujah!
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March 1, 2015 at 9:10 pm -
Was that the second coming ?
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March 2, 2015 at 3:39 am -
Last year, at the time of the raid, somebody was asking on a Sheffield forum for peple to post their memories of that rally – who was appearing and so forth. It may have been perfectly innocent, but it did rather look like somebody attempting to “refresh” their memory.
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March 1, 2015 at 10:08 pm -
Anyone who reads the titles of CR’s songs cannot fail to see that there is an agenda there.
Dammitall, the guy is obsessed!!Every Face Tells a Story,
Willie and the Hand Jive,
Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,
The Young Ones,
Our Day Will Come,
Stood Up,
Softie, as I Leave You,
I Gotta Know,
It’ll Be Me.If they are prepared to ‘go after the likes of Rolf Harris and other extremely famous people what is to stop them looking at CR? He may have money but that is no defence.
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March 1, 2015 at 10:57 pm -
As a genuine fan of Sir Cliff Richard, a lifelong fan, and yes I have met him, I find the speculation on this page as offensive as the lies being told about him. There are blatant misconceptions in this piece, the most minor of which is that the man is teetotal.
There is also nothing remotely funny or entertaining about what this innocent man is being put through. This man is being subjected to trial by media and it is wrong. I am certain that if crtain commentators on this page were to be put through what this man is having to endure it would not be so amusing. The lot of you should be ashamed of yourselves.
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March 1, 2015 at 11:25 pm -
Either Irony and Black Humour have totally passed you by, or you just haven’t read enough of the past posts on this blog to understand those within the context of this particular post, and why they might be just about the only things that keep some of us sane in a world that is rapidly losing its marbles
tl;dr you’ve got the wrong end of the stick
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March 2, 2015 at 8:11 am -
I am pretty certain Jimmy Savile was not guilty too. Not sure you might think even worse of me now, but believe it about Jimmy & The Establishment and you can believe it about anyone. That’s how the Big Lie works.
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March 2, 2015 at 12:26 am -
He did knock off Una Stubbs, didn’t he?
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March 3, 2015 at 8:36 am -
When this CR story first broke I thought to myself that “they” must be mad to go after such a high profile and genuinely popular celebrity. I also thought that the guy must have a vast fortune and would be able to afford the best legal team to defend him. I searched for information regarding his estimated wealth. My guess at the time would have been somewhere in the 100’s of millions of pounds. I was surprised to read that apparently he was only worth about £21,000,000, and had recently been liquidating his assets – so nowhere near as rich as I thought.
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March 3, 2015 at 10:54 am -
As noted, he gives a lot to charity (at least 10%, IIRC, in line with biblical practice), and I daresay that he hasn’t been doging his tax in the way that many celebrities have. He may well be following a variation of Andrew Carnegie’s example. Rich men and eyes of needles come to mind….
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March 9, 2015 at 5:50 am -
Cliff Richard has been nothing but gracious always- a gentleman and so generous. A free concert in New York so as to not disappoint his fans when Morrissey cancelled his tour for which Cliff was opening.
https://www.facebook.com/SirCliffRichardUSA
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