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.
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.
