Falling in luvvie all over again
The atmosphere in the room is thick and choking. Steam swirls around the sofa legs where Sir Cliff Richard, his shirt unbuttoned to the navel, is sitting, apparently mesmerised and staring with his big, dark eyes into Olivia Newton-John’s baby blues. “Livvy and I are always trying to find a way to have some physical contact,” he says, huskily. ““I enjoy that. We meet, we clasp but we don’t kiss; there’s all this going on but no one knows quite what. I feel it’s magical.”
“Mmmm,” agrees Olivia softly. “There’s a trust when you feel safe with someone. You can be more daring.” Suddenly, Cliff hurls himself across the sofa and clasps Olivia in his tawny arms. “I don’t think there’s any male who could meet Olivia without falling in love with her,” he declares passionately. “And I’m at the head of the queue.” And I sit, rooted to the armchair, hardly daring to breathe. Is this the scoop of the century? Ever since lovely Cliff decided that he was the ideal candidate to play horrible Heathcliff, his fans have been wondering if a midlife crisis has struck. He has acquired stubble, long hair and a practised snarl. His slender, boyish frame has been mercilessly trained and now sports the bulging muscles which are clasping Olivia so firmly. In fact, he appears to have regressed into a kind of latter-day rebellious adolescence. And I, it seems, am witnessing the final stage of this regression: The Bachelor Boy Discovers Girls.
But appearances can be extremely deceptive. Cliff’s shirt is unbuttoned, but he is wearing a high-necked T-shirt underneath. The steam swirling around the room comes from his humidifier rather than his libido, which also explains the husky voice. The (purely fraternal) hug is over as swiftly as it began. And the repressed passions he and Olivia are discussing? They relate only to their performance as Cathy and Heathcliff on a video they have filmed for their duet from the Heathcliff album. “Olivia was my first choice when it came to finding Cathy,” explains Cliff. “There are plenty of great women singers I could have asked. But I knew Olivia could eat these songs and spit them out. And we sound and look good together. I mean, I’m obviously the bloke and she’s the girl.”
He speaks with such feeling you can’t wondering whether this has been a problem in the past. If so, he has chosen wisely. For if there was ever a woman who could make Cliff look craggy, it has to be that living doll Ms Newton-John. Whatever vitamins she takes, you want what she’s having. At 46, her voice is as soft, her curls as blonde, her eyes as blue and her forehead almost as line-free as in her Sandra Dee days. And her outfit - a pale-blue T-shirt with little white hearts on it, matching long skirt and big clumpy boots - is positively teenage.
It’s extremely hard to believe that the Richard/Newton-John partnership was formed more than a quarter of a century ago. They first met, they think, at a party, but they can’t remember whose. They were immediately drawn to one another. “There are some people you meet that you like immediately. We clicked, and the relationship grew from there,” explains Cliff. Olivia admired the British Elvis for his professionalism - “the way he used the stage”. And Cliff’s first impression? “I thought she was gorgeous.” “Ooh,” protests Olivia, crossing her arms protectively across her chest.
So when Peter Gormley, who coincidentally managed both of them, suggested that Olivia should do a guest appearance on The Cliff Richard Show, its star leapt at the chance. “I said: Great, she’s a friend of mine, she looks good.” In fact, Olivia looked so good that she stayed for eight weeks instead of the one night which had originally been planned. “Cliff gave me my big break,” she says gratefully. She toured with him for two years from 1973 and, despite the intensity of a 24-hour professional relationship, both claim they never quarrelled. “Don’t forget we weren’t married or involved,” says Cliff, rather revealingly.
In fact, Olivia was involved at the time with Cliff’s best friend, Shadows guitarist Bruce Welch. In 1968, she was cited as co-respondent in the Welches’ divorce case and subsequently became engaged to Bruce. Four years later, in 1972, the relationship ended. Although Cliff is a committed Christian, this did not affect their friendship. “Bruce was my boyfriend, and our relationship had nothing to do with Cliff. I didn’t talk to him about what had happened,” says Olivia.
After the end of the Welch relationship, the rumours that Cliff himself was interested became unstoppable. In 1974, he even went to the lengths of issuing an official denial that he had proposed to Olivia. Nevertheless, titillating snippets kept the pair firmly in the public eye. There were pictures of them holding hands.
One night in 1980, they rang Capital Radio together and asked for slushy songs to be played to one another. So - the fifty thousand million dollar question did anything actually happen? No smoke without fire, or at least a humidifier, eh? There follows a hammy pantomime chorus of Oohs! “Whoahs!” and “Shall we, shan’t we”s?”, mostly from Olivia. Cliff, however, knows the dangers of any hesitation on this subject. “The first time I met Olivia, she was free,” he says, instantly, “but very, very soon she wasn’t, and I would never have dreamt of crossing that sort of barrier.”
“Our relationship is special but it’s never been a romantic one. I never proposed to Livvy and we never went on a date. When we went out, we always went as a team. We never got into the dating mode, and we might never have, I don’t know.. There hasn’t been a female I’ve sung with that hasn’t ended up engaged to me. Cilla, Livvy, you name it. It’s ridiculous, really. It does make me smile that no matter what I do, I’m instantly attached.”
The Capital Radio story, it turns out, was just Olivia and Cliff trying to sort out a disagreement they were having about a song. To resolve the argument, they rang Capital and asked them to lay the tune under dispute. “The next day, it was all over the papers. People were asking what we were doing together at that time of night.”
At first sight, they appear to have a lot in common. They both seem stuck in a Fifties teenage me warp. Cliff talks about “guys”, says crumbs and thinks he and Olivia have a “boy-girl relationship”, while Olivia isn’t sure I should be told that on the 1974 tour of Japan, Cliff got drunk (once) and woke up with a hangover. After all, I might be shocked. Professionally, childishness has preserved for both of them a sort of clean-teen appeal, which appeals lucratively to pensioners, pre-pubescent and middle-aged women on a nostalgia trip.
But do they really behave like this in private? Cliff, you feel, probably does. He comes across as a genuinely nice young kid, trapped in the body of a man 35 years older than himself. By his own account, he has only observed the intense emotional highs and lows of sexual relationships, never participated in them. Little wonder if he still, to a certain extent, sees the world through a child’s eyes. This may be due to his troubled relationship with his father, Rodger Webb, who beat him and always treated him like a child. “If a plug went wrong, he would make me hold the screwdriver for him while he changed it. I was never allowed to change it myself.”
They grew close only when Mr Webb fell ill and became in his turn totally dependent. “He was bedridden and we became really close. I cried at his funeral, but if it hadn’t been for the last two years of his life, I’m not sure I would have. Look, I’m not perfect,” he adds, “but I like being nice. I have a great lifestyle and people like me. And the only reason people like me is because I like them first. If you are a nice person, people equate that with weakness. They are wrong. I don’t talk about everything I’ve done. But that is because I don’t want to hurt other people.”
In contrast, Olivia, you feel, has chosen to hide her real personality behind this sugar-coated shell. She is obviously a stronger woman than she likes to appear. After all, she has survived three miscarriages, breast cancer and the break-up of her 12-year marriage to Matt Lattanzi, earlier this year. Her real feelings are surely too raw to be on display.
When you ask why two people with such user- friendly images want to play the egotistical, selfish and violent Heathcliff and Cathy, their answers neatly illustrate these differences between them. “It’s just acting,” says Cliff. “You don’t have to have murder in your heart to stab Caesar night after night on stage.”
But Olivia says: “All of us have had dark thoughts inside. Acting is a good way to acknowledge them and let them out without hurting people.” Since her cancer, she has had therapy and has learnt to express her real feelings and let them out without hurting people. “I was recently asked to appear as myself in a sitcom. I had to be really horrible, and I enjoyed it. A few years ago, I would have felt too nervous to do that. I thought I always had to be nice.”
They have talked together about Olivia’s marriage split but are not happy to do this publicly. This is understandable - for one thing, Olivia took Cliff to vet her fiance and make sure he was marriage material. “I really liked him,” says Cliff. “I thought he was a very nice young man.”
Their friendship is one that many of us would envy. Before the Heathcliff project, they had gone for years when contact was limited to the telephone. “But there’s never any side with us,” says Olivia. “Whenever we see each other, it’s as if no time has passed.”
Now, however, they may be spending a good deal more time together. For they have coyly hinted Olivia might play Cathy on stage as well as on the album. Cliff as Heathcliff and now the Milkshake Kid as Cathy? Well, why not? After all, for all their tempestuous posturings, the real Heathcliff and Cathy never got it together either…
By Lydia Slater