I kind of ‘grew up’ with Cliff Richard. He was there when I first started appreciating music beyond ‘the wheels on the bus’ but before ‘careful with that axe, Eugene’. I really liked The Shadows, his backing band who were always much better in his absence. He was hailed as ‘the English Elvis!’ but he was as much Elvis as Jeremy Corbyn is Churchill. He was Elvis like Barbar Windsor (god rest her soul) is like Christiano Ronaldo.

Because, other than the fact that his voice always disappointed, weak and breathy with no substance, there was something definitely creepy about Cliff. Always was. Then once he found Jesus (no idea where, loads have looked, possibly in a cave in Thailand?) his creepiness quadrupled. He never married, nor was ever seen in the company of the usual ‘rock’ (to stretch that word beyond any normal limit) hangers-on. No groupies, no actresses, just Sue Barker, the tennis babe, for a while. But even then you got the impression that this was a ‘marriage of convenience’, something for the public to see rather than a relationship in any normal sense.

Was he gay? He’s had long enough to come out for fuck sake. Was he just ‘celebate’? Odder things have happened. He was just a bit… different.

On the basis that every actor/singer/celeb today will, in 40 years time, be up for ‘historical sex offence’ charges, Cliff’s time was now. Whilst the mud was being slung, some of it just had to stick to Cliffy. Poor Cliffy. So the police went to investigate. Check his computers, search his house. No arrest was made, not even cautioned, but ‘an investigation’. And the key bit ‘relating to child sex offences’. Historical, obvs.

The BBC somehow found this out (‘somehow’ being that they were told by the police) and were there the day the battalions of officers arrived, thrusting their big furry mikes at poor, deer-in-the-headlights Cliffy

The investigation concluded, the searches ended and they found… nothing. Not a single jpeg of indecency (unless you count religious shit as offensive, like I do) was found, not a sniff of old underpants, not a phone number that didn’t go straight to God, not a solitary nuffink. Ok, so that’s all fine then, you can go back to living normally again.

But he can’t. And he never will. Because once any sentence includes your name and the words ‘child sex offences’, even if the middle bit says ‘was never even remotely involved in…’ you’re fucked. Royally shafted. You will FOREVER be tarred with the brush that had no tar on it in the first place. You can unscrew a lightbulb but you can’t unscrew a pregnant woman. Nor can you remove the stain that is forever ‘Cliff the kiddy-fiddler’. And that is absolutely awful. Even if you can’t sing for shit and really never could.

So, much as I don’t like ‘Cliff’s Law’ as it will be known, because it will in future gag the press from naming suspects until they’re formally charged or arrested, when they get it wrong, as in Cliff’s case, it could ruin the life of a sad old perv-, sorry, of a national treasure.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx