Sir Cliff Richard - the mega-star man of 100 singles, the Peter Pan of sexuality, the Queen Mother of popular entertainment, is being given a hard time by the media.
Nothing new there. This time, Cliff has irritated his detractors by reaching the top of the charts (for the 14th time) with a religious ditty which has received hardly any airplay, the Millennium Prayer.
The song has been effectively ignored by most radio stations, and there is absolutely nothing original about it: the words of the Lord's Prayer have been yoked with the tune of Auld Lang Syne, and that's it, apart from the royalty arguments, presumably.
The song left Boyzone's Every Day I Love You in second place. Many of us would prefer not to know that, yet we do. It it the price of keeping up with popular culture.
Most of the antagonism towards Cliff Richard and his popular success centres on his status as an eternal "bachelor boy" - 59 years old last October - and the alleged lack of passion in his songs.
Cliff has been making records for 40 years and not once, said a London Independent commentator the other day, has he hit upon a single quaver of sexuality: "It's inconceivable that anyone, in all that time, has ever used a Cliff Richard song in the process of seduction. As something to set up a romantic ambience, you'd be better off with the theme music of the BBC's Nine O'Clock News."
As a comparison, this is a mite unfair. There are male and female news junkies in this office who absolutely melt at the knee-trembling melodic strains which introduce the nightly BBC factfest. Admittedly it is a taste acquired only by a few.
However, the notion that there is no sex in Cliff's songs, or indeed in Cliff, or indeed that there is any hint of danger or passion or devilment or no-holds-barred naughtiness attached to the name of Cliff Richard, is not only cruel, but inaccurate.
Cliff's first huge hit, his 1959 Livin' Doll - with that cheeky apostrophe in place of a sober "g" (very daring at the time) was an upfront confession to one man's interest in bondage: he wanted to lock up his "livin' doll" in a trunk, well away from other hunks.
Devil Woman warned of the shocking dangers of wandering cats ("If you're out on a moonlit night, Be careful of the neighbourhood strays") and also of some "lady with long black hair/ Tryin' to win you with her feminine ways." Well, we've all met her, and wished we'd listened to Cliff.
A Misunderstood Man invited us to think again about Cliff himself: "The Devil incarnate or/A misunderstood man?"
Strong stuff. No wonder the Daily Mirror in those raunchy days asked: "Is this boy too sexy for television?" Indeed, for all we know, it might even be true that, according to the scandalous rum our of the time, Cliff and his "chaps" who set off on their bus on the famous Summer Holiday actually packed condoms.
As for danger and rampant sexuality, the notorious Kray twins had a contract out on Cliff in the 1960s. This was revealed in a television interview five years ago by the Krays' paymaster, Albert Donoghue, who alleged that the contract was taken out because Ronnie Kray had spotted Cliff in a restaurant and, in the chilling gangster language of the era, "liked" him.
The lucrative contract invol ved setting up an "introduction", but fortunately for Cliff and his fans, and possibly for Ronnie Kray, nothing ever came of it.
Another notorious contract was the one offered to Cliff to sing on Frank Sinatra's Duets al bum. Cliff later revealed to Gloria Hunniford that he turned down the invitation because he felt that two men should not sing a love song together. Bono's subsequent performance on the al bum showed what a shrewd decision Cliff made. As for violence - don't underestimate the man. Some of us have still not recovered from the terrifying vision of Cliff, playing the lead in his own stage production of the musical Heathcliff, skulking along the Yorkshire moors, smoking dope and actually assaulting a woman ("you pitiful slavish mean-minded bitch!").
It's not all stage stuff, either.
"We all have violence in us," he warned a quaking Telegraph reporter three years ago. "I've done press conferences where I've had to sit on my hands, because some impertinent young berk of a journalist who's about a third of my age asks me impertinent questions, and forgets that I'm a 56-year-old man. I just want to clobber him on the jaw. But I don't, and afterwards I think, yes, that's the triumph really in my life, that I haven't hit as many people as I could have done."
Yes, and where so many of us have failed: sad, embittered, frustrated media folk forever looking for someone to lash out at. Fortunately for us, Cliff Richard is always there.
