King of uncool

THE PETER PAN OF POP, Cliff Richard, likes to talk figures. He has, he stresses, sold more than 250 million records and had 14 British No 1 hits, including one in each of the five decades from the 1950s to the 90s ('I don't think anyone will ever beat that', boasts the saintly singer). He could also add that he sold out London's Albert Hall a record 32 nights in a row (in 1999) and his 117 British hits in a 44-year career total more than the Beatles and the Rolling Stones combined. Only Elvis Presley has spent more weeks on the British charts.

But for all the statistics, the man who was once Britain's hip-swivelling, controversy-stirring answer to Elvis has, for the best part of four decades, been viewed largely as the king of uncool. A poll by a British brewery last month named the affected singer (knighted for services to charity in 1995) the Uncoolest Celebrity Of All Time (ahead of Baywatch star David Hasselhoff).

To cynics the clean-living Christian is the high priest of naffness. When he put the Lord's Prayer to the tune of Auld Lang Syne to create the Millennium Prayer in late 1999 it was banned by many British radio stations. The song (or 'stroke of genius' as Richard called it) still hit No 1, but he was vilified in the press. One broadsheet writer declared: 'He [Richard] represents everything that's rotten in the state of Britain. He's soulless, passionless, the triumph of mediocrity, a celebration of suburban repression of all emotion, with a false over-the-fence niceness ? '

Harsh words, but the singer is used to the barbs. 'It doesn't annoy me,' says Richard, who plays Hong Kong on March 5 after a 21-year absence, but a change in his tone suggests it clearly rankles. 'I'm kind of confused, though, because to me the only thing that's really cool in our business is success and I have had more of that than anybody else,' he says. 'I've outsold most people. At last count - 12 years ago - I'd sold 250 million units of records and some of the great superstars today are really huge because they've sold 10 million. For me, cool is that.

'What I don't intend to do is be what other rock stars sometimes are. You read about sex, drugs and rock'n'roll and that if people spit at or curse their audience and swear and sleep around, that's cool. Well for me that's not cool, so I don't intend to be that. If that's what you mean, then I'll never be cool and long may that reign.'

Born Harry Webb in Lucknow, India, he moved to England aged six and, inspired by Elvis, became a rock'n'roll star in his teens. By 1958 he was attracting screaming girls, parental disapproval and media frenzy. Along with a string of hits such as Living Doll and The Young Ones, he starred in such frothy films as Summer Holiday and Expresso Bongo.