CLIFF RICHARD, the Nice Guy of Pop, is a man of hidden violence. A man who thinks he has the potential to commit any of the crimes he has ever read about. When he was young, he says, he might have been able to murder somebody. Sometimes he puts his hands under his bottom when people ask him questions, just to stop himself hitting them.

“I’ve sat on my hands at press conferences, trying to be the usual Nice Cliff Richard,” explains Cliff, “and when it’s over, I feel triumphant that I didn’t lam out at anyone. People start talking about your sexuality and whether you’re a homosexual (he says he’s not) and why you don’t sleep with so and so.” His voice rises stormily. “And they’re trotting me out as though I’m just a piece of something. Then I’ve been close to lashing out and hitting men.”

His envy spumes under the surface, too. “I envy other people’s success,’ he admits later. “I can’t help it. I try to control it now. But even so, I see other singers doing things and think, ‘I’m 10 times better than them’. Elton has made it in America and Clapton, too. But success there has eluded me.”

We’re talking because Cliff is celebrating 35 Top Five hits and 35 years of singing. He was, of course, meant to have been playing Heathcliff. “I was naive to think I could get it together in that short space of time, three years. Writing songs isn’t something you can do at the click of a finger.” Instead, he’s going on tour. “Some of the songs don’t have a great deal of depth. They’re just happy little songs.”

As we talk it becomes clear that the key to Cliff is self-control. Often he holds his chair as he talks. He controls his money tightly, overpowers confusing feelings with religious fervour and handles his image with metal gloves. He even curbs his ageing process and desire for food or sex. He seems sincere but self-deluded and naive.

Take money. Two weeks ago Cliff, who feigns to draw only £40 a week and is reputed to be worth £50 million, give or take, went shopping. “I found this absolutely fantastic shirt,” he says. “Then I saw its £910 price tag (Versace, natch). I said, ‘I’m really sorry, but if my mum knew this she’d kill me. I’m not buying it at this price’. And I walked out.’ Cliff, you see, respects his mum. He’s 54 and considers the impact of his behaviour on his dear mum. “She’s a very forceful person and I have to face her regularly.” And he never forgets his poverty-stricken childhood. “Why else would I be buying a second-hand Mercedes? Just because it’s £50,000 cheaper than a new one. I always have to justify everything.” In similar vein, he has been drunk “just twice” in his life. “I didn’t like being out of control.” And he has been on a strict diet for 35 years. “I eat one meal a day unless I’ve been to the gym. I always skip lunch. I think if I ate normally I would put on weight.”

Cliff, whose voice is thin and clean as well, is sitting in his office with honey, Aqua Libra and mineral water on the table. He has hair so lacquered it would stay in place in a wind tunnel, slightly tinted specs, St George’s Hill sun tan, a face as young as Joan Collins’s, and a body that is in pretty good shape for figure-hugging clothes. He’s dressed in relentlessly jazzy shirt, Star Trek badge and fawn shoes; the sort of gear you’d find in a provincial golf club at a Saturday evening social. Right now, it’s hard to tell which of us is the more absorbed with his image: me with my fierce 70-minute concentration or him with his three-decade one. He’s ‘not worried’ about getting old; just very concerned about being thus captured on film. “If I looked tired or old, I wouldn’t want to be photographed. I’m not against plastic surgery.” And what if the career of the Peter Pan of pop stopped? “If I was just a regular person who’d once had a career, I wouldn’t bother looking in the mirror so much.” HIS sex life has been equally narcissistic. He lost his virginity to Carol Costa, wife of Shadows guitarist Jet Harris, in a well-documented affair. But that was 30 years ago, and his last sexual experience. “Sex is not really my problem. Because I think I know all about it.” He laughs weakly. “I know how babies happen, if you know what I mean.” But why did he never sleep with anyone again? “I know how it all works. I don’t have to try it out all the time.”

He maintains that he doesn’t believe in sex before marriage. And that if he marries, his union will have a good chance of survival. ‘It’ll be new for us and we’ll have a greater respect for it. The evidence is that people who have slept around find it hard to have a one-to-one relationship.” But the evidence is that he finds it hard to have a relationship and it’s unlikely he’ll ever marry. “Well, you can speculate all you like about that.’ But isn’t it true that he fears commitment and wants to marry a woman like his mother? ‘Well, I would like to marry someone like my mum.”

Cliff was born in India of strict Christian parents. After Partition in 1947, his parents were forced to swap neo-colonial luxury for a council house in Hertfordshire. He grew up in spartan conditions, with the sitting-room furniture made from packing cases. His father, a dominant man, meted out corporal punishment. Once, Cliff came home saying he’d been beaten at school for something he hadn’t done. His father caned him again, saying he must have done something.

“I don’t remember it being an unhappy childhood. I can recall only that times were hard,” Cliff says. “My mum and I, when our feet were the same size, shared a pair of boots. If it was raining, either I went out or she did. Meals consisted of two slices of toast in a bowl of tea. But I don’t think of poverty as being synonymous with unhappiness.” He remembers being in a gang and stealing as a child. “It was a communal effort. We took money from a gardener’s coat and bought ice-creams with it.”