Cliff Richard, 80 Today! A Guest Blog

As most Cliff Richard fans will know, today marks his 80th birthday, and to celebrate this milestone, there is a new Cliff book released today, but this one is unlike any other Cliff book before it, so I invited one of the book's team, Vic Rust, to share the story of how the creation and making of the Thank You For A Lifetime birthday and charity book came about, and reveal the story behind the evolution of the project, how it progressed and evolved from an idea into a fabulous looking book, especially as I had been invited to write the forward for it, which l have included at the end of this blog. Below is what Vic told me and will no doubt enthrall every Cliff fan, reader and contributor of this truly amazing book!

Vic's Story

Sitting here, holding my copy of the Thank You for a Lifetime charity book a week before Sir Cliff Richard’s 80th birthday, it seems incredible how much effort and energy has been expended in the last sixteen months to make this beautiful book happen.

Terrie Hope, a regular contributor on the internet radio station Cliff Richard Radio, had been in contact with me as she regularly used my book The Cliff Richard Recording Catalogue, to assist with compiling her show, and I had contributed a Cliff-based quiz for her to use on air. 

We had been talking about the Diamond project, which had raised a lot of money for Cliff’s charities by creating a CD of a song (Diamond) based on lyrical submissions from fans. It was she who raised the interesting prospect of creating a book to mark Sir Cliff’s 80th birthday on 14 October 2020, featuring contributions from fans.

I was as keen as Terrie was, if we were going to go ahead with it, to make this a great book, and I set to work on designing a process to manage obtaining all the contributions from fans and getting them into book form. It was clear from the outset that we had something potentially wonderful and extraordinary on our hands.

From the beginning, I was eager for the contributions to mean something and to weed out the inevitable fantasies and offers of marriage. One of our clear priorities was to ensure that all submissions should be focused on how Cliff had inspired them – through his performances, his music, his talent and his faith.

Why did it need to be so complex? That part was simple. We were inviting contributors to donate £5 to put 250-word (max.) memory into the book. But each contribution needed to be vetted to ensure that they were legible and didn’t malign anyone, and specifically Cliff. In addition, we were allowing pictures to be included, which created extra work in tracking down and verifying copyright for their use (it was here that we quickly realized that a lot of the photos coming in were taken by Birch Photography at Cliff’s various wine-signings in Portugal, and we were so grateful to Dan Birch for allowing us blanket use of those photographs).

Terrie's Thank You For A Lifetime production office, where she multitasked on three screens

The project was still evolving. I had the idea of contacting a few celebrities for a contribution to the book, drawing up a possible list, which including the likes of Garth Hewitt, Chris Eaton, the Shadows and many more. I was also keen to get Nigel Goodall involved as he was co-curator of Cliff’s recordings for almost 20 years, to write the foreword. We started getting the responses in from fans and celebrities and it became evident very quickly that we were being overwhelmed by all the work that needed to be done. Terrie was on her own with managing the welter of emails coming in asking questions, making charity payments, providing photos and textual submissions and so on, while I was working at formatting the text and checking the quality of each of the photographs.

In came help from Jane Pinder, who primarily managed the promotional efforts on Facebook, proofread the sections of the book I had formatted, and helped with the huge backlog of emails. She also took up the challenge of contacting celebrities and came up with a magnificent list of them, which were very quickly added to the book, lifting an already brilliant project further.

Then another stroke of fortune came to the project: Mish Kloboucnik, who had provided the famous “Cliff leaping” photo for much of Cliff’s 75th birthday publicity, generously offered us a brilliant selection of photos. The inclusion on the front and back cover as well as montage sections within the book elevated the project even further.

The cycles of submission, verification, proofreading, managing communication continued until the beginning of August 2020, when we closed the doors. Now I had to produce the book (reining in the talents of my wife, Jane, to help with the cover)! To receive the draft copy of a book is always a thrill and both Terrie and Jane loved the result, with only a handful of tweaks needed.

At this time, as we raised the curtain to take pre-orders from those who had contributed, the tsunami of emails came in again. We needed more help and were very lucky to exploit the many skills of Trina Harris, who quietly and diligently crested the huge wave of emails and gave great assistance in the management of the orders, particularly as Jane initiated our plan for promotion around the various Facebook pages.

Now, with the book completed, I am happy to say that our efforts have been more than rewarded by the wonderful comments from those who have seen at least part of the book. But, when Terrie approached me about this project all those months ago, we agreed that we wanted to raise as much as possible for The Sir Cliff Richard Charitable Trust: That has been more than granted. At the time of writing this blog, we have raised over £10,000 and that figure is rising by the day.

In some ways, it’s sad to see this project completed (in others – neglected housework, lack of sleep, square eyes staring at multiple screens, etc. – it’s a relief!). It really has been a team effort to get this extraordinary and beautiful book out. But, without the heartfelt contributions from fans and the involvement of people with whom Cliff has worked, the book would be a considerably lesser beast than it is.

My Foreword

I wasn't old enough to remember Cliff Richard at the start, when he was the new British singing sensation of the late 50s. In fact it wasn't until the early 1960s that my sister got a record player. Like so many others of my age, l was primarily exposed to Cliff's early material, songs like The Young Ones, Do You Wanna Dance, Summer Holiday, and the one that really caught my attention - We Say Yeah. To most teenagers, music was very much a question of choice! And in my day the choice was simple. Cliff Richard or Elvis Presley.

But that all changed very quickly - soon the choice was the Beatles versus the Rolling Stones - and over the next few years Cliff and Elvis faded into the background leaving the most die-hard fans to admit that they still bought Cliff and Elvis records. And even though l wasn't one of those diehards l continued to collect Elvis records, while my sister collected Cliff - a treasury of wonderful and exciting music for both of us! Soon l had become fascinated not just with the records, but with the movies too! But never in my wildest dreams, did l expect to become part of that magical world by writing about Cliff's recording sessions or becoming one of the curators and reissue producers of his EMI catalogue from 1996 to 2018, and never did l expect to meet or interview him on so many occasions, observe him at work in the studio, trawl though hundreds of tape boxes at Abbey Road's tape library or discover a wealth of unreleased material that would now be made available for the first time!  I still find it hard to believe that when l watched Cliff on the big screen in Summer Holiday at my local picturehouse, or listened to the soundtrack album my sister gave me for my 13th birthday that 40 years later l would be working on a special edition of that very same album which would now include never before released alternate versions of the same songs that had enthralled me and so many others during the early months of 1963. It wasn't something l ever expected to play a role in! Neither as a teenager could l have foreseen that l would be asked to write a foreword for a book of birthday tributes from fans, musicians, and personal friends for the 80th birthday of the boy, who in 1958, we were told by Jack Good, was going to rock the world!

Postscript

Since the publication of the book, Terrie, Vic, Jane and Trina (the editorial team), received a thank you letter from Cliff's Secretary and Charitable Trust Trustee, Tania Hogan, at CRO about the money raised so far from sales of the book. It read: "Thank you all as the editorial team, for your sterling work in producing the fabulous book of messages to Sir Cliff for his 80th Birthday, together with the associated fundraising from all the fans. I banked the latest £10,600 cheques last week, and previously 3 cheques totalling £218 from you, so the current total on this project stands st £10,828 for The Sir Cliff Richard Charitable Trust. A fabulous sum of money, for which Sir Cliff and the Trustees are incredibly grateful. These funds will enable the Trust to support a number of worthy charities who appeal for funds - in such a difficult time for all charities. Thank you is not enough really - but rest assured every penny of these funds raised will be well used to help others. Please do pass on our grateful thanks, and best wishes to everyone concerned in the fabulous book - it's certainly one to treasure."