This week’s request came in from Martin Shoreham who said, “Hi Jon, I love your Single of the Week feature and wonder if you would do one for me? My mum was a massive Cliff Richard fan for years and went off him a bit when he did the remake of Living Doll in the 80s with the Young Ones. How did that collaboration happen in the first place and why was that song chosen? I’d like to know even if mum is not interested?” Well Martin, I hope I can make it interesting for you and maybe even your mum too. Right, let’s get to work.
Cliff is often described as the UK’s first rock ‘n’ roll star, but that accolade really has to go to Tommy Steele who has having rock ‘n’ roll hits three years earlier. Cliff, who was born in Lucknow, India and moved to the UK when he was eight years old and originally landed in Carshalton in Surrey before moving again to Cheshunt in Hertfordshire. There is a block of flats there now called Cliff Richard court.
His career began in 1958 when his first hit, Move it, penned on the back of a bus by Ian Samwell peaked at number two. The following year, Cliff’s film career began with him playing Curly, a delinquent’s young brother, in the film Serious Charge in which Lionel Bart wrote the music. “I don’t think he cared for the songs, Bart said,” “but one of them was Living Doll. I had taken it from one of those ads in the Sunday papers for a doll that did everything and I wrote it in 10 minutes flat.”
The song was originally intended for another rock ‘n’ roll singer called Duffy Power, but when it got included in the film it was decided it would be better for Cliff. Both Cliff & The Drifters thought that a song about a blow-up doll was naff, but Bruce Welch realised that if the tempo were slowed down, it would work better. He was right; Living Doll became Cliff’s first chart-topper, but the American Drifters took exception to the name of Cliff’s group and they stepped into The Shadows. It marked the arrival of a softer sound and a more family-friendly image, and sold more than a million copies.
In 1982 four members of the London alternative comedy scene, Rik Mayall (Rick), Adrian Edmondson (Vyvyan) , Nigel Planer (Neil) and Christopher Ryan (Mike), grouped themselves as The Young Ones for a BBC series. Their rude, violent, anarchic comedy proved to be very successful and, in 1984, Nigel Planer reached number two with a surprisingly relatively straight retread of Traffic’s 1967 psychedelic hit, Hole In My Shoe which had also reached number two. It also earned Planer a unique BPI award for Best Comedy Record of 1985. Like Fawlty Towers in the 1970’s there were only two series’ of The Young Ones and a total of 12 episodes. The second series finished in 1984.
The following year, Comic Relief was launched by Lenny Henry to help combat poverty and social injustice in the UK and in various third world countries. Every March it provides a whole night’s viewing on BBC1 and every major comedian and many key musicians have been involved. There is nearly always a spinoff single and in 1986 the organisers asked The Young Ones to make a single with Cliff Richard.
My late friend, the record producer Stuart Colman, was asked to participate and he once told me, “After I’d worked with Cliff on She Means Nothing To Me, I was approached by the Comic Relief team to discuss doing a single with The Young Ones. Richard Curtis and Ben Elton came up with both the concept and the song. I remember very well the afternoon we all got together to discuss the outline, and we never stopped laughing at the prospect of how the imagery ‘twixt Cliff and these snotty yobs would work out. Richard and Ben wrote the basis of the new lyric and I added bits along the way. Having worked with both Cliff and The Shadows, I suggested that Hank Marvin was involved, and it all fell into place very quickly. The Young Ones were more worried about working with Cliff, than he was with them. They were in awe of him and he was a true professional. Everybody had a ball and we loved every minute of making it, although it was one of the most complicated records I have ever made.”
The song went to number one and spent three weeks there and the official credit was Cliff Richard And The Young Ones Featuring Hank Marvin. It gave Cliff his 11th UK chart-topper. It also gave him the accolade of then being the only solo artist to have the same song in two different versions at number one. Between 1987 and 2013, 20 Comic Relief songs made the UK chart with a dozen of them making number one.
Lionel Bart, who was originally a member of Tommy Steele’s Steelemen in the 1950s alongside Mike Pratt (who later starred as Jeff Randall in Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased)) and co-wrote Steele’s first hit Rock With the Caveman, was the sole creator of the musical Oliver! and died in 1999 aged 68.
Rik Mayall passed away in 2014 following a sudden heart attack, he was only 56. Nigel Planer continues to act in films and plays and has also written 10 books, Christopher Ryan was still acting up until the mid-2010s and was last known starring as Baron Hardup in the pantomime of Cinderella at the Theatre Royal, Norwich. Adrian Edmondson married the comedy actress Jennifer Saunders in 1985 and has continued to appear in film, voice characters in cartoon films and, in 2010, founded the Idiot Bastard Band with Simon Brint, Rowland Rivron, Neil Innes and Phill Jupitus.
As for Cliff Richard, well he’s almost 84 and is still doing what he’s done for last 64+ years.