Citizen Cliff!

Disbelieving fans watched Cliff Richard take his seat in the stalls to see Darren Day recreate on stage the role Cliff made famous on film 33 years ago.

For 15 minutes the cast of Summer Holiday might as well have taken a bus to Europe themselves as 3,000 Cliff-worshippers went wild.

They yelled they stamped, they hung precariously from the balconies - and totally ignored loudspeaker appeals for calm.

Only the dramatically noisy thunderstorm start reminded the audience they were actually in the Opera House to see a show and not to lie at the feet of the idol.

An idol with a considerable amount of bottle, it has to be said. For bottle it took for the knight of pop to sit in the middle of 'M' row, risking a mauling from his adoring public.

And bottle it took to repeat the whole scene of adulation when he returned to his seat after the interval, having vacated it under cover of darkness.

Bottle it took, too, to run a gauntlet of fans dancing in the aisles after Darren Day invited Cliff on stage to join him in a duet of Summer Holiday to close the show.

As Darren said later: "It was the only way I could think of to get Cliff out of there.

"It had been a bit daunting singing with him in the audience, but his support has been absolutely wonderful."

When asked at an after-show party for the cast if he was not in fear of being mobbed, Sir Cliff shrugged his shoulders as if to say: "It comes with the territory."

While talking to co-producer Anita Land and Citizen managing editor Bob Gray at the party (pictured), Cliff revealed he had become a No.1 fan of the Citizen, pointing to last week's Page One special on the show and saying: "It's a good newspaper. This front page is terrific."

Cliff said he liked the headline "Cliff and his Shadow" with pictures of him and Darren Day, but quickly added:

"He is certainly out of my shadow now. Darren is very much his own singer."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.