Cliff Richard and the Shadows: Then and now

"The Shadows re-enter the hip parade," quips the Telegraph. Cliff Richard and the Shadows' reunion tour is a sellout, it adds. That's a clip of them performing The Young Ones in Dublin — and here they are performing the same song when they were all very young.

I love this song. So does my wife. Her favourite, however, is Outsider — and mine is Evergreen Tree. And who can forget Travelling Light and Spanish Harlem? Or, going uptempo, Move It, Dynamite, Angel?

The Young Ones, of course, is a classic, taking us back to our younger days — and making us think of our son.

We attended his graduation ceremony at a liberal arts college in the Midwest this summer. We loved it.

Now he has just started graduate school at an Ivy League college on the East Coast. I asked him to apply to a safety school, just in case… But his heart was set on the Ivy League.

I have never been to such a school myself. But then, as Cliff Richard sings, "young hearts shouldn't be afraid".

Incidentally, the picture here is taken from the Telegraph — and the headline from Mail Online.

The Mail Online recalls:

"More than half a century ago, the rock fans' bible, the New Musical Express criticised Cliff Richard for his 'violent hip-swinging exhibitionism' under a headline asking 'Is this new boy singer too sexy for Britain?' "

Here's the hip-swinger who made the NME see red.