'I lay on the floor crying, I thought I was going to die': cleared after two years of hell, Cliff Richard has given his first interview since being cleared of sex abuse accusations and reveals how being accused wrecked his health and he thought he would die.
Sir Cliff also lays bare his fury at South Yorkshire Police who launched the probe and says he is considering suing the BBC for broadcasting live from the raid on his Berkshire home.
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.
To read the continuation of this interview, click on: Cliff Richard - Daily Mail exclusive
