I am right up in the gods, in standing room only, so I can’t hear a word he’s saying. I can only hear a faint boom and, at one point the word “Brian”, which, when taken out of context, can be very mysterious. A few fans have red light sabers, which they waggle around. This looks completely obscene. But Cliff has the gift of inciting, and then ignoring his fans’ obscenities. He bops around, dancing with four crazy women in the front row, who are waving a banner saying “What a Knight”. At the end of every song he turns away from the audience and wiggles his bottom. This is horrible.
Other fans coo at me: “He’s very family orientated.” But he doesn’t have a family. He lives with a man. “Only because it didn’t work out with Olivia Newton John,” they say back, “Or Sue Barker.”
Cliff actually looks like Tony – they have the same mad, flat, nylon smile. He also has a disturbing resemblance to Lionel Blair, which upsets me because I once interviewed Lionel in his dressing room and his robe fell open. So whenever I think about Cliff Richard, I think about Lionel Blair naked.
think I am the only person in Britain who hates Cliff Richard. I feel awful about this because he gives a lot of money to charity and is clearly a nice person, even if he is so friendly with Tony Blair that he lent him his villa in Barbados because Blair looked “dwindled” after invading Iraq. Dwindled, by the way, is not an adjective. I checked.
Harmless, you say? Well, yes, and I wouldn’t think of actually banning it. But I still don’t like it. One of the fans has actually touched the bottom. She won a competition in Take a Break magazine, which meant she got to go backstage and meet him and she touched his bottom. You do know that is assault, don’t you? What did he do? “Nothing.”
I’m not getting anywhere with analyzing his appeal. For example, I speak to the Cliff Richard Fan Club – Hong Kong branch, who are here en masse. They are in matching windbreakers and they explain that in Hong Kong he is bigger than Elvis. So, why do you love Cliff Richard? And please don’t say, “He breathes.” That will upset me. The Cliff Richard Fan Club – Hong Kong branch look at me impassively and say, “He sings so…..well.” Argh! That is not an analysis!
