Cliff Richard Biography 1990 - 2010

Feb 1, 2011
Gwyn Jones

Cliff Richard still enjoying his wine at 70 - 'Adega do Cantor/danbirchphoto.com'

Cliff Richard is Britain's biggest selling pop star. From his early days with the Shadows to his 70th birthday, he's still recording number one records.

The 1990s may have been Cliff Richard’s fourth decade as a recording artist, but that didn’t daunt him. The committed Christian was still selling records, appearing in television shows and in 1995 became Sir Cliff when he received a Knighthood.

Cliff Richard in the 1990s

Cliff Richard started the 1990s with a record breaking sell-out tour of the UK and Ireland and he ended 1990 with his second Christmas number one in three years, with "Saviour’s Day".

In 1993 another biography of Cliff was published by rock writer Steve Turner, and if it wasn’t books it was records, with Cliff Richard – The Album going straight to number one. In 1995 Cliff ran into controversy again when the BBC ironically claimed his track "Misunderstood Man" was "too raucous" for listeners and banned it from its radio stations.

Cliff as Heathcliff

One of the most important projects for Cliff during the 1990s was his role as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. He starred in the show during 1996 and 1997, and topped that success when a video of the show released in 1998 ran for eight weeks at the top of the music video charts, which gave him his most successful video to date.

Cliff Richard into the new millennium

Cliff prepared for the new millennium with a major TV show, An Audience with Cliff Richard, on which he launched his soon to be 14th number one hit single, " The Millennium Prayer". This record combines the words of the Lord’s Prayer with the music for "Auld Lang Syne". Again Cliff didn’t get much in the way of radio airplay for this single in 1999, but that didn’t stop him. Neither did he let the new millennium arrive quietly; he put on a series of 10 countdown concerts with a big charity gala special on the 31st of December.

A break and a glass of wine

The new millennium saw a first for Cliff, he took the year off. There was also another first in 2002 when Cliff launched his own wine, Vida Nova, which he produces from his Portugese vineyard. It came to the public’s attention during an interview on the Des O’Connor Special, a popular tv programme in the UK at that time. The vineyard, called the Adega do Cantor, or the Winery of the Singer is in Guia, the Algarve. The wine was soon selling fast and can still be bought in the Algarve and the UK in Waitrose and selected stores.

Birthday honours

2005 saw Cliff in Portugal again celebrating his 65th birthday and the following year he was honoured at the Portugese Embassy in London when the country gave him their equivalent of a knighthood in recognition of his personal and business relations with their country for over 40 years.

Cliff carried on his recording success, launching an album of duets, Two’s Company, and then in 2008 launched his autobiography My Life, My Way. The book went some way to addressing all the rumours about his sexuality; in it he vehemently denies he is gay.

2008 also marked his 50th year in the business. There was a Tribute Lunch for him by the Variety Club, a plaque unveiled at Elstree Film Studios, and he launched a six cd box set entitled, And They Said It Wouldn’t Last. Finally at the end of the year Cliff was reunited with the Shadows at the Royal Variety Show.

70th Birthday and beyond

Cliff celebrated his 70th Birthday in 2010 and yet his 2011 calendar became the biggest selling male celebrity calendar on Amazon, beating Justin Bieber and Michael Buble. Cliff has sold more singles in the UK than any other artist, and he’s still going strong. He’s showing no signs of wanting to hang up his recording microphone, and still has a massive dedicated fan base. It will be interesting to see what the Peter Pan of pop will bring us in the next decade.