In Concert with Cliff Richard and, er, me!

It was in early March. I was in bed in my Washington DC hotel flicking through emails on my phone. One email stood out. It was from Cliff Richard's office.

"Can I call you urgently?" asked his PA. What on earth could this be about, I wondered to myself.

I've been a fan of Cliff for going on 50 years. I first saw him in concert in 1978 at the age of 16. Since then I've seen him in concert on at least a dozen occasions, if not more. I've got more than 1,500 songs by him on my phone.

A few years ago I was introduced to him at a charity event. I was completely tongue-tied and couldn't think of anything to say to him. He's the only person to have had that effect on me. Not even HM The Queen did that!

In 2021 Cliff published his autobiography and I interviewed him for an hour, but because of Covid it had to be on Zoom. Luckily, I was not tongue tied and I thoroughly enjoyed it! You can see it HERE

Last year I hosted a one hour interview and phone-in with Cliff , Paul Gambaccini and Daniel Janner around their campaign on the right for suspects in sex crimes not to be publicly named before being charged.

Anyway, back to the phone call in Washington in March. It was Tania, Cliff's PA.

"Cliff is doing six concerts at the Hammersmith Apollo in November," she said.

"I know, I've already booked tickets," I replied.

"I rather thought you might have," she laughed.

She went on to explain that instead of singing for two and a half hours, Cliff wanted an interview to form part of the show, and would I be interested in being the interviewer, live on stage with him. I would be doing three of the performances, with Sir Tim Rice doing the interview in the other three.

I tried to remain cool, but as you can imagine, I was very excited!

So that's what's happening. On November 10, 11 and 12 that's what I will be doing - interviewing Cliff  live at the Hammersmith Apollo!

Who'd have thought!