Cliff Richard: 'A Cloud Has Lifted'

BBC Radio 2 interview.

Cliff Richard: Case Upheld

What a monumental waste of time and money this has been.

Cliff Richard: When Will This Madness End?

Sake.

Cliff Richard: Back For Good

Good news.

Cliff Richard: All My Trials

It was only the day after the raid that the enormity of the accusations against him hit home, and he simply lost the power to stand up straight.

‘That was the moment of my biggest despair. I just collapsed. I couldn’t imagine what depression was like, but I have an idea now. I felt as though I was in this hole and I had no means of getting out.

‘I didn’t know how I could face the future or face my friends or face my family. I was in tears, I have to admit.

I was on my knees in tears in the kitchen. I was thinking: “How can I get out of this? How can I ever climb out of this hole.” Somebody got me to my feet and said: “You’ve got to stand up, you are not guilty, hold your head up, you can do it.” ’

Last week, Cliff was in tears again, this time for rather different reasons. He had just heard the news that no charges would be brought against him. After a two-year police investigation, the Crown Prosecution Service had taken just a month to throw out all the allegations against him.

As flimsy as the ‘evidence’ was (‘There wasn’t any evidence. Not a single piece’), Cliff had feared that his Kafkaesque nightmare might end up with him behind bars. ‘I always knew I was innocent, but I always worried I would end up in prison. Or at least having to face a court.’

How did he react when he learned it was all over? ‘I sat on the edge of my bed and wept,’ he says, candidly. ‘I couldn’t help it with all the emotion pent up all that time.’ ...

Daily Mail.

Astounding, lengthy interview in the Daily Mail about Cliff's terrifying ordeal.

Cliff Richard: Tormented

Wednesday's Mirror.

The Crown Prosecution decide whether there's any point in taking a case to court - that is all.

I bet you a case of Sir Cliff's own Vida Nova wine this will be laughed out and never get to court.

What a bloody country.

PS Yes, of course this happened.

It's just rubbish, Kelvin Mackenzie (!), today's Sun.

Cliff Richard: Move It

A police chief has ­dramatically weighed into the Cliff Richard ­investigation – telling detectives on the case to “put up or shut up”.

Antony Stansfield, Police and Crime Commissioner for Thames Valley, also blasted the infamous raid on the star’s home which took place on his patch.

He revealed he had no prior warning South Yorkshire officers planned to turn up – a decision that left him appalled.

And Mr Stansfield says the length of time Sir Cliff has been left in the dark is unacceptable. The star has never been arrested or charged.;;

The police chief’s attack comes just two weeks after we revealed the Crown Prosecution Service had still not received a police file over allegations of historical sex abuse.

Mr Stansfield, 70, said: “You either put up or shut up, and this clearly has not happened in this case.  

“He’s never been charged. But two years later I would have thought something should have happened.”

A former Army major, he said he was shocked when South Yorkshire Police turned up for the raid on the star’s £3.5million Berkshire home in August 2014 with a BBC helicopter camera crew in tow while the singer was in Portugal.

“I thought that was the most extraordinary behaviour. I certainly didn’t know it was happening", said Mr Stansfield.

His remarks – made in an interview with new Sunday Mirror columnist Anne Diamond on her BBC Berkshire radio show – come as Sir Cliff, 75, remains “shocked and strained” by the inquiry and continues to dismiss sex abuse claims as “completely false”...

Sunday Mirror.

And meanwhile in their sister paper, the Sunday People.

This is breathtaking.

The People has been the main peddler of the ludicrous boy rape and murder fantasies of 'Nick', fed to them by the liars at Exaro News!

John Lewis Xmas Ad: Paedophile Backlash

Today saw the launch of the annual TV campaign from the high street giants, luring customers in ahead of the Black Friday mayhem and mulled wine/mince pie gluttony.

The #ManOnTheMoon ad – currently trending on Twitter – tells the story of a little girl who spreads festive spirit to a lonely OAP on, you guessed it, the moon.With its poignant tagline 'show someone they're loved this Christmas', JL have joined forces with Age UK to raise awareness of the million elderly who can go months without human contact.

However, several citizens of cyberspace have blasted the campaign as "creepy" and "disturbing", questioning why a child would befriend a pensioner.Several folk also suggested the male protagonist could actually be child molester Sidney Cooke...

Daily Star.

Don't be silly, Sidney Cooke, raped and killed boys not girls!

PS Also loving this front page...

PS And from Private Eye...

Peak OJ!

Cliff Richard: Allegation 'Farce'

SIR Cliff Richard has been quizzed again by cops over claims of a sex crime, his spokesman said last night.

The 75-year-old entertainer met South Yorkshire Police voluntarily this week.

He was interviewed under caution last year by officers investigating allegations of a sex crime involving a boy in the 1980s, but was not arrested or charged.

His spokesman said last night that Sir Cliff is denying the “completely false” allegations.

He said: “He co-operated fully with officers and answered the questions put to him.

“Other than restating that the allegations are completely false and that he will continue to co-operate fully with the police, it would not be appropriate for Sir Cliff to say anything further.”

The singer was seen yesterday at an Indian restaurant in Barnsley, South Yorks, in high spirits chatting to diners...

The Sun.

Looks like this story broke too late to make the front page, odd that plod didn't tip off the media in advance this time.

Ann Widdecombe: What Happened?

WHEN Paul Gambaccini issued his account of being falsely accused of child abuse, he noted several instances of the police or CPS releasing news about dropped inquiries or rebailing to coincide with more successful or more sensational news of Operation Yewtree.
 
I shuddered when I read that because if either the police or CPS should be adopting “a good day to bury bad news” mentality or “guilt by association” news management then another precious cornerstone of our justice system is crumbling.

Justice agencies in this country should be concerned with justice and nothing else.
 
News manipulation should never be attempted and statements about the course of an investigation should be determined by facts not convenience...

Yet I suspended judgment because I had the fairness to accept that it could all be coincidence, even if the regularity suggested otherwise.

Now it looks as if that fairness was misplaced as I cannot have been the only person to notice that the long overdue apology to Lady Brittan for the police’s failure to tell her dying husband that he was no longer under any investigation (and had not been for quite some time) coincided with the news that a bishop had been convicted of sex offences.

Is that what they were waiting for?...

Ann 'Not Anne' Widdecombe, Daily Express.

Sad that this has divided people on party lines, and many Labour Party supporters knee-jerk that this is all a Conservative Party conspiracy to cover up some secret Tory paedophile ring.

Whilst much of it is partly just an excuse to bash Labour via its new deputy leader, it is obvious that Tom Watson is a power-crazed delusional thug who has behaved appallingly.

PS And not forgetting... Zac Goldsmith urged to withdraw paedophile ring allegations: Ex-Tory MP Harvey Proctor says Goldsmith should rethink mayoral bid unless he retracts claims of VIP abuse at Richmond guest house, The Guardian.

While The Telegraph's rottweiler, Dan Hodges, urges - hilariously - Put down your pitchforks and stop the Tom Watson witchunt. LOL!

Paul Gambaccini: Only Connect

Oh, yes. I mentioned the last line. There has not been a month in my life when I have not thought of it. The message from downstairs reminds us that circumstances may be individual but humanity is universal: “Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?” 

Paul Gamabaccini chooses Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man as his Book Of A Lifetime, The Independent.

It's not hard to see why.

For what it's worth, it's a favourite of Fagburn, too.

Gambo's memoir, Love, Paul Gambaccini:My Year Under the Yewtree, is reviewed here.

Cliff Richard: Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me

At the Birmingham Symphony Hall last week, Cliff Richard made his first British stage appearance since being denounced last year as a suspect in police paedophile inquiries, and subjected to a raid on his home, which the BBC was tipped off to witness. His return was greeted with acclaim, not least by some of the same newspapers that banqueted on the original allegations against him.

One of the claims made against Sir Cliff has been dropped for “lack of sufficient evidence to justify a prosecution”; the other two seem likely to go the same way. There are encouraging signs that the public, which appeared earlier to rejoice in the spectacle of investigations against historic sex offenders turning into a witch-hunt against all and sundry, is starting to feel ashamed of itself... 

Max Hastings leaps to the defence of Sir Cliff Richard - and his chum Field Marshall Lord Bramall - in The Sunday Times, and attacks one of the most lunatic and shameful episodes in British journalism's history.

And here's their sister paper, The Sun, applauding Cliff's Lazarus-like live return this week; 'The child sex abuse allegations aimed at Sir Cliff Richard have done nothing to dampen his cheesiness...' etc etc

And here they are sticking the knife in last year...

Cnutz.

Paul Gambaccini: Guilty Until...

It’s a witch-hunt that will be regarded by history with the same disdain and derision with which we now regard the Salem witch trials in Massachussets,” he says. Having lived through the McCarthyism era in the United States as a boy, he sees clear parallels between the hunt for reds under the bed then and the search for paedophiles.

“The FBI couldn’t arrest Stalin, so the authorities either blacklisted or arrested folk singers and screenwriters as if that could contain him. And now, having failed to stop Jimmy Savile in his lifetime, the police have diverted the spotlight on to persons who had been alive in his time as if sexual perversion was an airborne contagion.”

Of Operation Yewtree, set up in response to the Savile affair, he says: “If it had been a football club it would have been relegated. It lost such a high percentage of its cases.” The Crown Prosecution Service is in his view “the ministry of lies”.

Having talked to many of the other high-profile figures involved in cases like his, he is convinced that the justice system has got out of balance, with the rights of accusers put before those of the accused. “There has been an inversion of the principle of the foundation of the British justice system: innocent until proven guilty.”

The police have, he believes, embarked on what he calls a “reign of terror” — going on fishing expeditions rather than following leads. “They had a dedicated phone line and they invited members of the public to accuse celebrities and they said: ‘You will be believed.’ ” When a fellow broadcaster, Liz Kershaw, told him she had been telephoned by the police out of the blue and asked whether she had ever been groped by Dave Lee Travis, Gambaccini concluded that there had been a “mutation of the British justice system from a centuries-old internationally respected evidence-based system to one based on subjective rumour and accusation”.

He was horrified to hear Alison Saunders, the director of public prosecutions, describe accusers as “victims”. Some “of the people who make allegations of sexual abuse aren’t telling the truth . . . The overwhelming majority of allegations made against celebrities during the witch-hunt have been false, many of them preposterously so.” While the price paid by those accused of sex crimes is enormous, he points out that there are no consequences for anyone fabricating allegations. “It’s a win, no-lose situation.” ...

Gambaccini — who has been openly gay for decades — is convinced that homophobia has also been involved. “There is a disturbing tendency in these cases to think that gay men have underage partners, for which there is no validity and statistics. It’s a merging of concepts by an undiverse police force. When I came to this city I was horrified by the ‘pretty policeman’ campaign — when the police would tart up their youngest and best-looking police officers and have them go into public parks and toilets and seduce gay men into making propositions at which point they would be arrested . . . The institutional homophobia of the Metropolitan police has evolved.”...

Profile in The Times.

Fagburn is trying to think of a word or phrase for when the British police are too corrupt and crooked for words, but I guess it's just 'policing'.

PS Extracts from My Year Under Yewtree.

Daily Mail: Exclusive!

Getting the Great Bard to write about Sir Cliff is quite a scoop, yes.

Poor sod.

Harvey Proctor: Fantasy Island

The home of ex-Tory MP Harvey Proctor is being searched by cops probing historic allegations of child sex abuse.

Detectives from the Met Police's Operation Midland are carrying out the search of his home, which is within the 16,000-acre grounds of Belvoir Castle, in Leicestershire near Grantham.

Mr Proctor, 68, works for the Duke and Duchess of Rutland, who live on the estate with their five children.

A Met Police spokesman said he "can confirm officers from Operation Midland are carrying out a search of an address in Grantham in connection with their inquiries".

Operation Midland was launched by the Met last November following allegations that boys were sexually abused by a VIP paedophile ring centred around Westminster more than 30 years ago.

Officers are investigating allegations that three boys linked to the alleged ring were murdered...

Daily Mirror.

Harvey Proctor is pretty odious - even his fellow Tory MPs disowned him for being too right-wing (and racist) - but the accuser here is clearly a major league fantasist.

There were gay sex parties run by top Tories where they killed boys, yeah right.

Shouldn't he be charged with wasting police time?

Paul Gambaccini: Fly Paper

Paul Gambaccini, the broadcaster, has backed a 28-day limit for police bail after telling how the police and prosecutors “sat on me” for 12 months before he learnt he would not be charged over an allegation of sex abuse.

Mr Gambaccini told MPs that he had forfeited more than £200,000 in lost earnings and legal costs over a year on bail in which he was unable to work because of publicity surrounding the allegation.

The former Radio 1 DJ, who has since returned to work on Radio 2 and Radio 4, said he was used as “fly paper”, as his arrest was publicised by police in the hope that other people would come forward to make allegations against him.

He said he suspected his bail was extended until the end of high-profile cases involving other celebrities, because detectives on Operation Yewtree — the investigation into historical sex offences — did not want juries to hear that a former DJ had been cleared.

Mr Gambaccini was giving evidence to the Commons home affairs committe after Theresa May, the home secretary, announced in December that she was consulting on a 28-day bail limit in all but exceptional cases.

She said that it “cannot be right that people can spend months or even years on pre-charge bail with no oversight”.

Mr Gambaccini said: “I faced the full weight of the state with unlimited financial resources for 12 months for no reason — it was a completely fictitious case, a science fiction case which would have required time travel, and I don’t have a time machine.”

The broadcaster was arrested on October 29, 2013 and police handed papers to the Crown Prosecution Service on February 10, last year, but it was October 10 before he was told no case would be brought against him, he said.

By Christmas 2013, the press regarded it as a “nothing case” and a character witness later told him police had stood him down because there was no prospect of a trial, Mr Gambaccini said.

He said that his bail was extended on seven occasions with only “vague” explanations from the police, but he gradually realised that the dates often coincided with important developments in the Yewtree investigation...

The Times.

What a world, what a world!

Paul Gambaccini: Free At Last!

BBC broadcaster Paul Gambaccini will not face action over alleged historical sex offences, prosecutors say.

The 65-year-old DJ was held at a south London address in October last year as part of the Metropolitan Police's Operation Yewtree investigation.

The Crown Prosecution Service said a 75-year-old man arrested at the same time will also face no further action.

It said the inquiry concerned allegations of sexual offences against teenage boys in the early 1980s.

Mr Paul Gambaccini has always denied the claims.

Baljit Ubhey, the Chief Crown Prosecutor of CPS London, said: "Having carefully reviewed this case, we have decided that there is insufficient evidence to prosecute." ...

BBC News.

Good news - always thought this case stank.

Bad news - the Met held him on bail for a year, well done Plod!

Hope Gambo is back on the wireless soonest.

How The Sun 'broke the story'...

Update: Paul's statement...

‘There may be members of the Press who will ask me to give interviews or make provocative statements. I will politely decline.

‘To discuss horror in this way is to trivialise it. I will never trivialise the 12 months of trauma to which I have been unjustly subjected. I would like to thank my friends, my lawyers and the people of this country for their support during the past year.

‘Wherever I have gone, I have been stopped in the street by members of the public offering encouragement. I am very grateful. I’ll be back at work soon. Thank you.’

Oscar Wilde: Nonce!

Next year marks the 120th anniversary of the playwright, wit and poet’s conviction for gross indecency with a string of young men, which saw him sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. More than a century later the details of his downfall have lost none of their power to fascinate and shock. What is more, the recent trials for sexual offences of high-profile figures from Rolf Harris to Max Clifford have lent the Wilde case a dubious kind of lustre, giving it the status of what Wilde’s grandson, Merlin Holland, recently described as “one of the very first celebrity trials”. In a timely move, a new play co-written by Holland and opening in London next week gives us an opportunity to review it...

The Independent On Sunday - sans irony - wonders how Oscar Wilde would have fared in our Operation Yewtree age of paedomania, and pronounces him GUILTY!!

Antony Edmonds, author of a new biography, Oscar Wilde's Scandalous Summer, is quoted;

"He certainly paid for sex with youths under the age of 18 which is a criminal offence. But even if his activities had led only to exposure and not to arrest, he would have been savagely pilloried in the media. Wilde was 39 when he seduced Alphonse Conway, and Conway was an inexperienced boy of 16. I’m sure that Wilde’s plays would have been taken off the stage just as quickly today as they were in 1895.”

How sad, how true...

The Sun: We Will Bury You!

Despite splashing this across their front page, The Sun has no story, except that they named "gay Gambaccini".
Gambo, you are the quarry!
What a bloody country.
"If we was smart we'd emigrate..."

"What I want to suggest is most emphatically not that the problem of paedophilia does not exist, but that as a society we have become unhealthily obsessed by it. A kind of madness is gripping our age: I felt that as I pictured the terrified Bijan Ebrahimi, the crowd chanting “paedo, paedo” outside his flat, and nobody daring to try to protect him. And this in my own country.
"It has reached a stage when (as a friend ruefully observed recently) “I caught, without context, the name of a once-well-known 20th-century broadcaster on the news the other day, and found myself thinking: “Dead or Yew Tree?” I worry nowadays even about smiling at children on trains."

Matthew Parris writing in The Times today on our new witch hunts and witch trials.
Parris's article must have been filed before he heard about Gambaccini, but sadly, in our current climate of hysteria, would be apposite any day it was published.

PS The Sun is currently being seriously outshat in the tabloid sheer shittiness stakes by the Daily Express's racist "Crusade" against Bulgarian and Romanian immigrants. 

Paul Gambaccini: Join Sun+ To Find Out More!

Shameless, sickening promotion by The Sun.

Thanks to Scott Bryan.

For the record, five of the 14 other men arrested under Operation Yewtree were later told they won't face any charges.
No-one's been convicted yet.
One man has committed suicide.

"On Monday night, 28 October, I attended an excellent production of the Kander and Ebb musical, the Scottsboro Boys, at the Young Vic theatre.
"It concerned a group of black men in Alabama in the 1930s who were falsely accused of sexual offences. Within hours, I was arrested by Operation Yewtree. Nothing had changed, except this time there was no music." 

Official statement by Paul Gambaccini.