Sunday, August 2, 2015

Why I Will So Miss Cilla Black


The news of some celebrity’s deaths hit you hard personally, especially when they are somewhat unexpected.  Cilla Black’s was one such case.  I mean, it’s tough when you lose someone you grew up with like I did with her.  Not literally of course as I was brought up in a nice squeamishly clean middle-class Methodist Orphanage in the England’s leafy green suburban Home Counties whilst Cilla (then still Priscilla Maria Veronica White) was raised in a Roman Catholic working-class terrace house in Liverpool’s rather rough Scotland Road area.

We didn’t ‘meet’ until I was sixteen years old in 1964 and had started a phase of dating girls.  She helped me enormously as I only had only to turn on my transistor and play her Number One Hit record ‘Anyone Who Has A Heart’ and I scored.  Big Time.  She was like my big sister as she was already 21 years old by then and had just enjoyed a modest success with her first record penned by her Merseyside mates The Beatles who had persuaded their manager Brian Epstein to take her on.

I got confused later when I heard the American singing star Dionne Warwick claim that Burt Bacharach had written ‘Anyone Who Has a Heart’ for her but that Cilla had pipped her at the post and reached the Number one spot where she stayed for a few weeks.  It sounded like sour grapes to me but anyway it made no difference as Cilla was already one of us and when she quickly followed her first success with another No I Hit... 'You’re My World'…. I knew she was singing to me, and whichever girlfriend I was foolishly trying to woo at the time.


These were exciting and heady times to be a teenager in the Swinging Sixties and we had this whole new world of fresh clean-cut wholesome pop music with trendy fashions to match.  Cilla was part of this vanguard of natural talent that was simply discovered and nurtured in those days and not manufactured as is in later generations.  Whenever she appeared on Television in her Biba clothes and her Vidal Sassoon sculptured haircut we couldn’t help but like her, and we wanted to be be just like her too. After all she had been discovered by the greatest pop band of the last century, so of course we loved her.  Then when The Righteous Brothers sang ‘You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling’ so did Cilla.  The boys made it to the top of the UK charts, but we made sure that Cilla made it to the No 2 spot the very same week.

As the years passed Epstein try to transform her from a singer into an actress but her efforts were met with limited success as she was never any good at playing roles being other people.  However what he did establish was that she had a natural flair for comedy whether it was in TV or on London’s West End stages.  What Epstein, and others realized after his untimely death, that this untrained young singer’s greatest asset was that she had tapped into our hearts by just being a very natural down-to-earth charismatic Northerner who had an ability to see the best in everything and everybody.  It seemed an obvious step then into hosting TV shows, and before we could even blink, she was not only fronting two of the UK’s most successful shows in television history, but she also became the highest paid person on the small screen for her efforts.

From 18 years we faithfully arranged our Saturday night schedules around watching ‘our’ Cilla try and help and match up some lovelorn singles on ‘Blind Date’.  This was mainstream television at its very best and although British inverted snobs liked to pretend that the whole affair was far too lowbrow for them, in reality none of them, or us ever missed a single week.  When it started in 1985 I was married to Peter and the only time we ever disagreed was when one of the light head bachelorettes failed to pick the hottest man. I’m kind of happy that watching ‘Blind Date’ was in fact one of the very last things he and I did together the night that he passed away too.




Cilia’s other mega-successful TV show that also ran for some 16 years was ‘Surprise Surprise’ where she matched up families who hadn’t seen each other for decades.  Always a Kleenex grabbing moment, but I made a point of stressing to Peter that as much as I loved being a voyeur, I would never ever want to be reunited with any of my dysfunctional family. There is after all a very good reason why I had not clapped eyes on most of them for 50 odd years.

What Cilla captured so succinctly was the heart of a nation, as even when she turned into one of the shrewdest and most professional television of our generation she wanted us to always remember that she was just one of us, and that life was really a lorra lorra fun, as she would say in her heavy Mersey accent that she still reveled in.  Attempts at turning her into an international star failed miserable, but we wonder if she really cared about that?  We certainly didn’t, she was quintessentially English and we were happy to keep her to ourselves.  It is testimony to how popular she was also within ‘show business’ too as a host of legendary British stars have been lining up today one after another to pay such very glowing tributes to a woman who will be so missed by all her peers too.

We loved Cilla Black not because she outlived and outlasted all those incredible musicians that made up the Mersey Sound some 50 years ago, but because she was a star when you needed to have an actual talent to be one on television.  Cilla shared it with us with such boundless enthusiasm and all that goodwill that you almost wanted to be one of the successful couples that went the whole way  on ‘Blind Date’ as you knew she would be at your wedding in the front row wearing a big hat.




When Pink News made a list of 50 Greatest Gay Icons, Cilla was no.23 which was 9 places higher than Beyonce. However Cilla Black was not just one of the major popular cultural icons of mine, and other generations, she was always a 'lorra lorra fun'.  When my very inquisitive and innocent 5 year old nephews from Northern Ireland once asked me years ago which really famous people I knew in London, I immediately lied and said 'Cilla'.  They were far more impressed than if I had named Beckham their own idol as even they loved her more than even the Royal Family.

So farewell Cilla and a big thank you too as we will have nothing but the fondest of memories, and I want you to know that I never blamed you for the fact that your music way back then made those rather forward girlfriends want to go beyond ‘first base’ with me.  Urgh !  I got over them, but never ever over your music or you.  

As Paul & John wrote  … and you sang …


And love comes love shows

I give my heart and no one knows

That I do

It's for you




CILLA BACK   27 May 1943 – 2 August 2015   R.I.P.