« Olivia était mon âme sœur, sa mort a été un choc terrible »

 

Alors qu’il sort un nouvel album de classiques de Noël, Cliff Richard révèle qu’il est encore sous le choc de la mort de la reine et de sa chère amie Olivia Newton-John

......... Another huge sadness for Cliff this year was the death from breast cancer of his close friend Olivia Newton-John at 73 in August. ‘I wasn’t so shocked when the Queen died because of her age, but I was shocked when Olivia died,’ he says.

‘She’d been fighting cancer for more than 30 years. She was determined to beat it and we, her friends, all thought she had.

'I spoke to her five weeks before she died and she sounded just like her usual upbeat self: “Oh, g’day Cliff, how are you darling?”.

‘Friends would always ask me how she was, and I’d tell them she sounds really good, that she was never going to give in to this thing. We all prayed that we’d have her for at least another ten years, and hopefully more if she could finally beat it.

‘Then five weeks later I got the news of her passing and I was just so shocked. The TV companies and press wanted me to say something but I said, “I can’t look at a camera and talk about Olivia now. I’m too upset.” It really was heart - breaking – a real shake-up for me.

‘I can speak about her now, months later, but even now her death still affects me. It seemed so unfair.

'It was a terrible, terrible shock because occasionally in life you have a soul-mate friendship. We talked to each other a lot and we spent a lot of time together.’

Cliff and his manager had done a lot to help Olivia build her career by inviting her to appear on his first BBC TV series back in the 70s. ‘She had a hit record, If Not For You, and she performed it on the show.

During the Queen’s funeral I had tears in my eyes. I thought she would go on forever, like her mother 'I loved her, the camera loved her, the cameramen all loved her, the audience loved her.

‘She was only going to be on the show for one week but she stayed for eight because everyone loved her. I’d joke, “I can’t get rid of this woman!”

'So we were locked together, and it never changed. Even now I feel sad, knowing that this glorious, gifted person was ripped away from us.’

Cliff Richard reveals he's still reeling from the deaths of the Queen Olivia Newton-John | Daily Mail Online

 

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