Justice Off The Cliff

Geoffrey Robertson QC has it right.

If Sir Cliff Richard is guilty, then he deserves whatever he gets. At least the same is deserved by Bill Wyman. He was 47 when he repeatedly and flagrantly had sex with a girl who, at 13, was probably younger than the alleged victim in this single instance.

Notice how, while the man who had the effrontery to have a hit with Stairway to Heaven featuring a wobble board is now in prison and ruined, Jimmy Page himself has never faced any action whatever in relation to his 14-year-old girlfriend of yesteryear.

Rolf Harris has rightly been stripped of his CBE; Page was awarded his OBE long after everyone knew about him.

I have often had cause, in relation to a wide range of artists, to wonder if I can love the music while hating the drugs. I have decided that I probably can.

But I am starting to doubt that.

The elevation of Sex, Drugs and Rock'n'Roll into a kind of national and global substitute for politics, patriotism and religion has led both to the worship of idols and to the persecution of heretics.

And yes, since you ask, something very similar is, as it were, strikingly true of football. Bramall Lane, indeed.