Matt Lucas and David Walliams wrote a musical based on Cliff Richard’s songs – only for the pop star to veto the project.
The Little Britain duo revealed they created the jukebox show at the peak of their fame, but the Living Doll singer flat-out rejected their idea.
Speaking on the Making A Scene podcast, the pair said the musical would have been named after his 1963 hit Bachelor Boy and revolve around a priest forced to choose between his love for a woman and the priesthood.
Speaking with his comedy partner, Lucas recalled: ‘We were riding high at the time and you said, "I want to do a Cliff Richard musical called Bachelor Boy."
Walliams added: ‘It was about a priest who goes to an inner city church where no one goes and tries to bring people into the church with the power of rock ‘n’ roll.’
Lucas continued: ‘You and I spent two or three weeks writing quite an in-depth treatment, a proposal for what Bachelor Boy would be. We worked out all the different songs and where each song would go, and we really loved it. We sent it though to Sir Cliff…’
‘…Thinking he was gonna go, "Oh brilliant, the Little Britain guys want to do a musical with me",’ Walliams continued. ; It was like "Nope!" OK, allright, There you go, that was our story.
‘He had no interest in doing it, which I found a bit baffling.’
The conversation arose after Walliams recalled that the worst musical he had ever seen was called Harry’s Web, also based on the songs of Cliff Richard, whose real name is Harry Webb.
That show ran briefly at the Theatre Royal Windsor in 1999, written by Tim Whitnall, who would go on to create the successful stage tribute Morecambe and the BBC Four dramatised biopic Best Possible Taste: The Kenny Everett Story.
Sir Cliff’s songs were also used in a stage show called Cliff - The Musical, which was written by DJ Mike Read and Trevor Payne. It ran for just three months in London’s West End in 2003 and was savaged by critics, with the BBC's Mark Shenton calling it ‘witless, insulting [and] clumsily thrown together’.
• Lucas had to pull out of a performance of Les Miserables in Sydney on Wednesday when his voice began to fail him.
The 51-year-old, who is playing Monsieur Thénardier in the Australian tour, was replaced by an understudy.
He posted on Instagram yesterday: 'In over 30 years, I've never had to bow out of a performance, but tonight, as I was singing Master Of The House, I could feel my voice deserting me. So if Thénardier looked very different in act two, that was because the amazing Connor James took over.
'I am now in bed resting up, and I hope to be back on stage soon.'
