Sir Cliff Richard feared he'd go blind when he fell ill due to stress.
Sir Cliff Richard
The 80-year-old singer was accused of historical sex crimes in 2014 and he admitted the investigation - which ultimately exonerated him of all allegations - took its toll on his health because he contracted shingles, which caused a painful rash to erupt on his face, including dangerously close to his eyes.
The 'Congratulations' singer, who stayed at his Portugal home while the investigation was going on, said: "I had been through a really, really bad time of my life. I went through a terrible time.
"Within four months of my accuser setting fire to my life, I had a pimple on my head and I was in Portugal so I called a friendly doctor I know and said, 'Can you come and see me, I don’t know what’s wrong'.
"He came the next morning and he said, 'You have shingles'. And I said, 'Well how can I get shingles?' and he said, 'Stress.' "
Showing a picture of the rash on 'Piers Morgan's Life Stories', he added: "It was so dangerous – do you see how close it got to my eyes? Had it happened on my eye I might have gone blind."
Cliff wanted to show the picture to give people a better understanding of how difficult the months that followed the accusation were for him.
He said: "It’s very difficult for me to explain what it was like for me to wake up every day at 3.15am and the last thing you think of before you go to bed and the first thing you think of when you wake up is that accusation, which I knew was false, God knows was false."
The 'Young Ones' singer collapsed on his kitchen floor one day over the impact the allegations could have on his life.
He said: "I had fallen down because what I had thought was, 'Oh my God, I’m in a pit and I don’t know how to get out of this pit. My career rests on it, everything, everything that I’d lived for rested on this.'
"I’m thinking I could actually end in prison as an innocent man. And suddenly my legs just wobbled, went wobbly and I went to the floor."
Cliff previously sued the BBC after they aired footage of police raiding his home in the wake of the allegations against him.
He is thought to have received over £2 million in legal costs and £280,000 in damages in 2018 as a result.
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