GLASGOW police officers had their hands full when one thousand “screaming adolescents” crowded outside Glasgow’s Empire Theatre after a show by Cliff Richard in September 1959.
The officers cleared a path for traffic in West Nile Street, then slowly got the excitable crowd into more manageable groups on the pavements.
Still the fans chanted, "We want Cliff, we want Cliff!" Evidently, they were not for going home. At which point, by chance, a jeep-load of the 170 Provost Company, Royal Corps of Military Police, based in the city’s Newlands, passed by. Its occupants quickly assessing the scene, four lance-corporals jumped out and gave the civilian police a hand.
“The hysteria rose and fell”, noted the Glasgow Herald’s music critic, “but mostly fell as the cool night air did its work, and in half an hour the crowd had dispersed, with nothing to complain of but a sense of anti-climax and a few crushed toes”.
Cliff has been part of an All-Star Variety show at the Empire. His presence had guaranteed a full house.
Many of his fans were very young. “Some wore school blazers, most joined long queues for ice cream and lollies”, wrote our critic. “All burst into a shriek of welcome as Mr Richard’s number -- 10 -- flashed on at the side of the stage.
“Mr Richard, plumply handsome, appeared to do a lot of singing, but as his audience screamed on with increasing intensity, no-one heard a note.
“A peroxided blonde tore her hair in ecstasy. The blazer group grew quieter as the rest got more excited. Mr Richard gave a disjointed wiggle, the curtain came down, the surge for the stage-door began”.
On YouTube, incidentally, there’s footage from an interview with 18-year-old Cliff, broadcast on the ATV show Celebrity, hosted by Daniel Farson, on September 30, 1959. The material had been presumed lost but was unearthed at the British Film Institute.
Asked whether he was aware of the shouting at his concerts, he replied: “Not all the time. You do at first but when you get carried away ... you know, if an audience is very good and they’re all for you, you can get completely carried away and forget they’re even there”.
He said he had received letters from as girls as young as five. “I think the typical fan is between fourteen and sixteen, but you get the odd little letter from a nine-year-old girl. They’re the ones who propose marriage, very sweetly”.
Richard is marking his 80th birthday this autumn with a series of concerts, including Glasgow Royal Concert Hall (just across the road from the site of the old Empire) on September 25.
After that 1959 concert, at the mobbed stage-door, police officers told fans that Cliff would “certainly” not be making an appearance. He was true to his word: he was in his dressing-room, reading a good book.
Read more: Herald Diary
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