No more records vows Sir Cliff

Sir Cliff Richard has vowed never to make another record because of the unofficial ban on his music by radio stations.

The 64-year-old singer is so disheartened over their boycott that he has decided to boycott the recording studio.

'I just don't have the time to waste making a record that no one will play,' he said.

'As a musician you make a record for the radio so that the public can hear it, but my songs don't get played. It's not that DJs don't like them, it's that the stations have a policy that says:

"We don't play him".

'I just don't want to go to all the effort of putting something together if people won't even give it a chance.'

The final straw came last October with the release of Something's-Goin' On, an album he had spent a year making in Nashville. It was well-received by critics but failed to get any radio play.

The war with the stations began in 1998 when Chris Evans announced he would not be playing Sir Cliff's records on his breakfast show.

Other stations followed and even Radio 2, the traditional home of pop music for the more mature audience, deleted him from their playlists.

Last year Tony Blackburn was suspended from his show on the 'golden oldie' station Classic Gold for defying an order not to play Sir Cliff 's records.

A despairing Sir Cliff went so far as to release a record 'undercover'.

A heavily remixed dance version of his song Can't Keep The Feeling In came out under the pseudonym Black Knight and was greeted favourably by DJs. But they did not take long to discover who the artist really was. 'I proved my point,' said Sir Cliff.

'I will be playing concerts until the day I die because I love performing and the atmosphere of my fans - but I'll never make another record.'