In the year 2000, Cliff decided he would finally take a year off  - never been known before but he had his reasons - relaxing, traveling and visiting friends.  His diary was blank leaving him free of all "major" events and for once in his 42 year career giving him the freedom to do as he pleased.

There were a few personal exceptions was a local charity concert in Weston Super Mare, - in memory of Jill Dando, plus he appeared at a  Christian music festival in Glastonbury in July, apart from this Cliff was overseas and one of the places he visited was the USA where he was virtually free to wander around shopping, sightseeing and being a general tourist without the hassle of autograph hunters and flashing cameras.

2000 also marked Cliff's 60th birthday celebration which began with a dinner at the Grosvenor House Hotel, organised by the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation, followed by a week's cruise in the Mediterranean with 80 friends and family on the luxurious yacht Sea Goddess .

One organisation in particular celebrated Cliff's birthday in style and that was the Shadows Music website featured on the links page.  I personally organised a world wide Shadows Music concert for 14 October where fans, bands and individual musicians started at 10 am to play live music of Cliff and The Shadows.  This concert span across the globe and was run a little like a relay race - at 10 am a local club up in Tyneside (Newcastle) started the ball rolling by playing for an hour, non stop hits by their heroes, after an hour they handed the baton (by telephone) to a club in Denmark, who in turn played for 2 hours, the baton then got passed back to UK, onto Holland, Thailand, Canada, New Zealand USA Hungary and back again to the UK.  A total of 16 hours non stop music was played and hundreds of musicians took part to commemorate, first of all Cliff's birthday and secondly the love for the music he and the Shadows created.

The concert was recognised by Shadows members, Alan Jones took part on the days events at the Warwick venue while Bruce Welch, although hoping to have attended one of the events, sent a fax to myself from the Sea Goddess wishing everyone well and hoping .the day would be a resounding success (which it was).

So in honour of 2000 and Cliff's 60th birthday, ...........  the concert was for him !

The year 2000 was certainly different for Cliff's life and career and from what I can understand from many sources he is not contemplating retirement - thank you god our prayers have been answered!