Monday 16 March 2009

Young Cliff

No 13 in an occasional series of extracts from The Postcard Century
November 1960: Miss Jay B at the Royal Deaf School in Exeter gets this card from Nailsworth. Did you get your sweets yesterday. I saw this card in Boots shop. I thought you'd like it. Hope you are well and happy. We love you very much. Mummy and Daddy xxx.
Cliff Richard represents and is idolised by a new and hitherto hidden constituency, youth. He is the home-grown version of more unattainable American models as only half-knowingly he leads the third revolt of the century. Workers are empowered, women long emancipated: now, the teenagers want their own domain, and, given their ever growing purchasing power, start to gain it. Apart from standard adolescent rejection of parental values there is no ideology, yet their cadres are formed in the now ubiquitous coffee bars of the land.
How many of those rebels without a cause, today turning sixty like Cliff Richard himself, followed him all the way and listened to the saccharin Christian of 1999 singing them into the Millenium with banality's ultimate double whammy, the Lord's Prayer sung to the tune of Auld Lang Syne?

4 comments:

emfink said...

Miss Jay B's evident affection for Cliff Richard is, perhaps, more understandable given her deafness.

Anonymous said...

Indeed. And some degree of visual impairment too, I would think.
But he's a fine clean-living man.

Unknown said...

Hey, steady on; I'm just over 60, and Cliff is, or will be, 69 this year, born 1940.

Anonymous said...

So?