Cliff Richard fans: We're the Cliffettes!

Mum and I have seen Cliff Richard in concert more than 10,000 times in the past 50 years. Our home is a shrine to him. You can’t see the walls in my bedroom, hall, staircase or lounge for photos and memorabilia. Cliff’s our hobby and our life. But unlike a lot of fans we’re also very respectful. We wouldn’t dream of seeking him out in restaurants or hotels or turning up at his home for an autograph. When he’s not on stage or at an official event, he’s off duty and that time is his own.

My love of Cliff began in 1958 when he was on the Saturday night live music show, Oh Boy! Mum wasn’t a fan to start with but when she took me to my first Cliff concert at the London Palladium in 1960 when I was 14 she saw what the appeal was. Before Cliff I’d loved Elvis but in April 1958 he was drafted into the uS army. If someone had said to me I’d change my allegiance from Elvis to an unknown British singer I’d have said no way, but then I heard Cliff’s first single, Move It, on Radio Luxembourg and that was it. I used to dash round to friends’ houses on a Saturday night so we could watch him on Oh Boy!

Since that first concert mum and I have seen Cliff all over the UK as well as in Paris, Brussels, Holland, Denmark, Germany, Austria and Ireland. When he’s on tour we try to go every night and we’ve regularly camped out to make sure we get tickets, usually in the front row. We’re the ones everyone else moans about because we always get the best seats.

The longest we camped out was two weeks, which I used to do regularly. Although I’ve never added up what we’ve spent on tickets I can safely say the money would have bought us a big house outright, lavish furnishings, a car and the services of a landscape gardener. Instead we have a small house and carpets that have seen  better days but Cliff comes first.

I’ve got magazines from the Fifties and Sixties with Cliff in them, all his old LPs and thousands of press cuttings. I even own some of his clothes bought as memorabilia – a suit, some trousers, a couple of pairs of sunglasses and the light beige corduroy jacket he wore in the heats when he competed in Eurovision. My friends don’t think I’m mad because they’re all Cliff Richard fans themselves. Mum and I have run the Sussex and Surrey fan club since 2002 and have met Cliff seven times, most recently in 2008 when Cliff invited all the UK fan club secretaries to join him for afternoon tea near Windsor. I’m definitely one of his number one fans. I love everything about Cliff – his music, his looks, the whole package.

Joan Batten, 65, is a retired office accounts clerk and lives in north Wales. she says:

From the first moment I saw Cliff Richard in Oh Boy! on TV when I was a schoolgirl, I loved him. I used to work in Woolworths on a Saturday and I’d dash home on the bus at closing time to watch the programme. In march 1961 I went to see Cliff in concert in Chester. Dad drove me there and in those days Cliff just did 20 minutes on his own at the end after performing with The Shadows. I had to do my chemistry homework by torchlight in the car on the way home. That was the deal with Dad.

The next time I saw Cliff was in Blackpool in 1963 when I went to three consecutive nights. Cliff is very good looking and so polite. I like Cliff the man more than I like his music. The rock ’n’ roll stuff is the best and I loved his tour last year with The Shadows but I’m not keen on his slow ballads. I’ve now clocked up more than 200 Cliff concerts in the UK, australia, New Zealand, Dubai, Los angeles, san Francisco and south africa. I travel all the time anyway so it’s a bonus if I can tie a concert in with a holiday.

Once I was travelling around South Africa and just happened to see a poster outside the town hall in  Durban saying Cliff Richard here in two weeks! I managed to sneak into one of his rehearsals and he recognised me and gave me a hug. I went to three concerts in Durban and two in Johannesburg and got invited into Cliff’s dressing room every night.

Between 1966 and 1972 Cliff and I went to the same church, St Paul’s in Finchley, and I even used to play badminton doubles against him. He hates to lose and is a perfectionist in everything he does. He also has a dry sense of humour and will have a real joke with you. During those years I knew him so well that he always used to find a seat for me at concerts and I rarely had to pay for a ticket.

Over the years I’ve spent thousands and thousands of pounds on tickets, though. I’ve got seats for three of  his dates at the Albert Hall in the autumn. I remember seeing him there in the seventies and managed to get backstage. These days not many people get into the dressing room, including me, because there’s so much security now.

Most of my friends are Cliff fans and are more bonkers than me. For  as long as Cliff keeps on performing, we’ll keep going to see him.

Jean Sadler, 60, retired this month as an office administrator and lives in liverpool. She is divorced with two sons and two grandsons. She says:

I was nine years old when I became a Cliff Richard fan after seeing him on the Oh Boy! TV show. Mum wouldn’t let me watch it as she thought it was disgusting – the newspapers at the time said Cliff was too sexy for TV, which we laugh about now, and Mum agreed with them. Luckily my gran liked the programme so I’d go to her house every saturday to watch it.

The first concert I went to was in 1963 when I was about 13. My cousin and I queued from 5am until 1pm to buy tickets to see him at the Empire in Liverpool. I’ll never forget it. we could hardly hear  Cliff singing because of all the screaming. 

I remember when he sang Love Hurts  there was a woman hanging off the  balcony above the stage shouting: “I love you Cliff, you don’t hurt me!” I just thought he was so fabulous and I still do. I wonder how someone can be this famous for this long and still be so nice.

The first time I met Cliff was around 1970 and he was performing in a play in Bromley in Kent. I’ve met him many times since and he’s always so lovely.

Being a Cliff fan brings a lot of friendships. For 11 years I’ve been running the Merseyside and Cheshire fan club with my friend Irene whom I met in 1964 at a fan club meeting. She was the witness at my wedding and I’m godmother to her son.

I’ve not missed a concert tour since 1964. It’s cost me £70 a time for tickets to see Cliff at the Albert Hall this October. I’ve been to more than 200 concerts and I go to a number of dates in each tour, something I couldn’t do when my kids were little.

People often ask, why Cliff? I never had well-paid jobs so I could only afford to follow one artist. Cliff was fantastic so it had to be him. Because he’s been around so long we’ve grown up with him. People five or six years older than me loved The Beatles in the same way because that’s what they grew up with.

You get your money’s worth with Cliff. He plays for two-and-a-half hours at his concerts. There’s no support act, it’s just him. any type of music you can think of, Cliff has recorded it at some point. He has kept up with the trends as well as still performing the old favourites. I love his new stuff best but most people don’t even know what it sounds like because you don’t really hear it on the radio.

My sons think it’s great that Cliff’s my hobby because they know it makes me happy. I still enjoy every concert the way I did when I was in my 20s. People talk about Cliff’s fans being the blue-rinse brigade but I’ve never seen anyone with blue hair at his concerts, apart from one where a lot of fans donned blue wigs as a tongue-in-cheek nod to the perception others have of us all.