‘It seemed to me that Tony was suffering’

Sir Cliff Richard has sold his palatial home on the St George’s Hill estate in Weybridge, Surrey, but the entertainer is not forsaking Britain for America, as you might have heard, but merely downsizing. Indeed, he has already put in an offer for a smaller place scarcely 20 minutes away.

At 65, Sir Cliff is at an age when most men have completed the metamorphosis into a fully formed Victor Meldrew and are only too happy to talk about the sense of despair they feel for their country and its people. The traditional next stage is migration to Spain — or anywhere else in the world but Britain — where disgruntled expats are wont to gather and moan and talk about the way things were.

What I find extraordinary about Sir Cliff is that he has become an old-age pensioner with not just his youthful good looks but also his youthful spirit intact. Just as Alastair Campbell doesn’t do God, Sir Cliff doesn’t do anything else but God, and therefore cynicism and despair don’t come naturally to him. All that seems to interest him is the future.

He has decided he wants to have one last crack at breaking the American market and that, he says, might mean a bolthole across the Atlantic, but never a home. He could never have any other home but Britain, but he feels that a place that is a bit smaller and easier to manage is now more sensible for him.

‘Oh, people complain about the country, but I don’t think life has ever been very easy or without change for any generation. Anyone who lives here for more than 20 years sees change and, while we may not like it, we have to live with it and we might as well change with it and get on with it because we aren’t going to stop it.’

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Gareth Roberts

The sad death of ITV

I am talking to Sir Cliff the day after the local election results, and a look at any of the papers, but the Daily Mail in particular, would have most people on the line to the Samaritans as a matter of urgency.