‘It’s been a pretty weird adventure’: Ritchie, the unlikely British pop star beloved by Brazil

Richard David Court – or Ritchie as Brazilians know him – at his lakefront home in Rio de Janeiro. Photograph: João Laet/The Guardian

Richard Court’s father was a military man, and when his teenage son announced he was ditching his degree at Oxford and moving to Brazil to pursue a career in music the lieutenant colonel took a distinctly dim view.

“Take it from me, you’re going to one of the grimmest dictatorships in the world,” the son remembered being told over the Christmas of 1972.