[13] He has remained a popular music, film, and television personality at home in the UK as well as Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Northern Europe and Asia, and retains a following in other countries.

In 1949, his father obtained employment in the credit control office of Thorn Electrical Industries, Enfield, and the family moved in with other relatives in Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire, where he attended Kings Road Junior Mixed Infants School, until a three-bedroom council house in nearby Cheshunt was allocated to them in 1950, at 12 Hargreaves Close.

As a member of the top stream, he stayed on beyond the minimum leaving age to take GCE Ordinary Level examinations and gained a pass in English literature.

1s "Travellin' Light" and "I Love You" and also "A Voice in the Wilderness", lifted from his film Expresso Bongo, and "Theme for a Dream" cemented Richard's status as a mainstream pop entertainer along with contemporaries such as Adam Faith and Billy Fury.

Photographs of the celebrations were incorporated into Richard's next album, 21 Today, in which Tony Meehan joined in despite having very recently left the Shadows to be replaced by Brian Bennett.

Typically, the Shadows closed the first half of the show with a 30-minute set of their own, then backed Richard on his show-closing 45-minute stint, as exemplified by the retrospective CD album release of Live at the ABC Kingston 1962.

In the early years, particularly on album and EP releases, Richard also recorded ballads backed by the Norrie Paramor Orchestra with Tony Meehan (and later Brian Bennett) as a session drummer.

Richard acted in the 1967 film Two a Penny, released by Billy Graham's World Wide Pictures,[31] in which he played Jamie Hopkins, a young man who gets involved in drug dealing while questioning his life after his girlfriend changes her attitude.

According to John Kennedy O'Connor's The Eurovision Song Contest—The Official History, this was the closest result yet in the contest, and Richard locked himself in the toilet to avoid the nerves of the voting.

In 1973, he sang the British Eurovision entry "Power to All Our Friends;" the song finished third, close behind Luxembourg's "Tu te reconnaîtras" by Anne-Marie David and Spain's "Eres tú" by Mocedades.

That year, Bruce Welch relaunched Cliff's career and produced the landmark album I'm Nearly Famous, which included the successful but controversial guitar-driven track "Devil Woman", which became Richard's first true hit in the United States, and the ballad "Miss You Nights".

Many big names in music such as Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton and Elton John were seen sporting I'm Nearly Famous badges, pleased that their boyhood idol was getting back into the heavier rock in which he had begun his career.

The song was quickly added onto the end of his latest album Rock 'n' Roll Juvenile, which was re-titled We Don't Talk Anymore for its release in the United States.

That same year, Richard opened in the West End as a rock musician called upon to defend Earth in a trial set in the Andromeda Galaxy in the multi-media Dave Clark musical Time.

[41] In October 1986, "All I Ask of You", a duet that Richard recorded with Sarah Brightman from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical version of The Phantom of the Opera reached No.

[48] On 30 June 1990, Richard performed to an estimated 120,000 people at England's Knebworth Park as part of an all-star concert line-up that also included Paul McCartney, Phil Collins, Elton John and Tears for Fears.

In 1998, Richard demonstrated that radio stations were refusing to play his music when he released a dance remix of his forthcoming single "Can't Keep This Feeling In" on a white label record using the alias Blacknight.

In October 2011, Richard released his Soulicious album, containing duets with American soul singers including Percy Sledge, Ashford and Simpson, Roberta Flack, Freda Payne and Candi Staton.

[82][83] In June 2004, British disc jockey Tony Blackburn was suspended from his radio job at Classic Gold Digital for playing records by Richard against station policy.

"[89] Richard expressed concern about the sexually explicit public image of singer Miley Cyrus, following controversy surrounding a semi-naked video for her song "Wrecking Ball".

"[91] In an article for The Guardian in 2011, the journalist Sam Leith wrote of Richard's lack of commercial support among radio stations: "His uncompromising Christianity, his clean-living ways, and his connoisseurship of the fruits of his Portuguese winery have made him an object of incomprehension, even ridicule, for the uncultured, alcopop-drinking younger generation.

[99] In a three-page letter written in October 1961 to "his first serious girlfriend",[100] Australian dancer Delia Wicks, which was made public in April 2010 after her death from cancer, Richard wrote, "Being a pop singer I have to give up one priceless thing – the right to any lasting relationship with any special girl.

Their romance attracted considerable media attention after Richard flew to Denmark to watch her play in a tennis match and they were later photographed cuddling and holding hands at Wimbledon.

Richard joined public figures such as Malcolm Muggeridge, Mary Whitehouse and Bishop Trevor Huddleston to demonstrate in London "for love and family life, against pornography and moral pollution".

[86][138][139] In August 2014, Richard was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September's referendum on that issue.

[140] In August 2014, Richard's apartment in Berkshire was searched after a complaint to the Metropolitan Police's Operation Yewtree, which investigated sexual misconduct allegations in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal.

[144] The former Director of Public Prosecutions, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, QC, criticised the police force for its "completely disreputable conduct" and said its action could make the warrant unlawful.

[145] Richard pulled out of a visit to the US Open tennis championships, turned down the freedom of his adopted Portuguese home city of Albufeira, and cancelled a scheduled appearance at Canterbury Cathedral because he did not want the event to be "overshadowed by the false allegation".

[150][151][152] The development came a day after an independent report had concluded that South Yorkshire Police had "interfered with the singer's privacy" by telling the BBC about the August 2014 property search.

[172] Cliff Richard's 1958 hit "Move It" is widely regarded as the first authentic British rock and roll record, and "laid the foundations" for the Beatles and Merseybeat music.