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Cliff Richard to get everyone in a festive mood with special BBC Christmas show

By | Published on Monday 31 October 2022

Cliff Richard

Christmas is going to be extra Christmassy this year, because the BBC has commissioned Cliff Richard to perform a set of his festive classics and more for the yuletide season.

The hour-long show will be filmed at St John At Hackney Church with various guests joining in the fun. As well as that, Sara Cox will interview the musician at Abbey Road Studios.

Songs likely to be on the setlist include, of course, ‘Mistletoe & Wine’ and ‘Saviour’s Day’ – both of them Christmas number ones – plus ‘Millennium Prayer’, which is more of a new year song, but whatever.

”I remember, as though it was yesterday, the three series – each containing thirteen shows – that I did for the BBC in the 70s”, says Cliff, slightly irrelevantly. “I loved every moment of them! Now I’m really looking forward to the Christmas show that they have asked me to present, with the aid of some friends, this December 2022”.

Does he have a Christmas wish though? Let’s ask him. Cliff, do you have a Christmas wish? “My Christmas wish? That you will enjoy our show. Christmas greetings to you all”.

Oh, that’s nice. Kate Phillips, the BBC’s Director Unscripted Content, adds: “We are enormously excited to welcome Sir Cliff Richard to the BBC this Christmas, with his inimitable voice and charm there’s no one better to get everyone into the Christmas spirit”.

That’s right, no one. Not even Santa. But the real Christmas miracle is that this all seems to suggest that Cliff and the Beeb are friends again, after he sued the broadcaster back in 2016 over its news coverage of police arriving at his Berkshire home in 2014. He eventually won that case in 2018, following a very bitter court battle.

So that’s something. Although it’s not a very upbeat, Christmassy way to end this story though, is it? This is supposed to be heart warming. Unfortunately, the only other festive Cliff story I can find in our archive is about the news, in 2017, that the UK had decided that ‘Mistletoe & Wine’ was no longer its big Christmas anthem.

Though people like eating at Christmas, don’t they? Eating so much that they feel like they might actually burst. That’s not how Cliff will be preparing for his Christmas show though. So let’s all finish this little story by revisiting Cliff’s insightful explanation of his anti-burp diet, which I think I’ve now made sufficiently festive.

Oh, this special Christmas show is going to be on BBC Two, by the way. The actual transmission date is yet to be announced.



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