‘Dame Cilla? Nah. I’m content being an Old Big ’Ead.’
Cilla Black, slim and elegant in a scarlet sweater and black pencil skirt, those cracking legs encased in smoky tights, is sitting in her sixth-floor eyrie overlooking London’s Victoria Street. It’s rush hour or, to put it another way, the sun is over the yardarm. ‘Would you like a glass of bubbles?’ she asks and quickly produces a flute of pink champagne. 
At 70 – although she looks years younger – the bestselling British female singer of the 1960s and the unrivalled queen of Saturday night shiny-floor television, makes no apology for breaking open the bubbly. ‘I’m worth it,’ she says with a characteristic chuckle, but she means it too.
She has just completed filming the pilot for a potential new sitcom, Led Astray, written by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, who gave the world Birds Of A Feather. Cilla plays former daytime host Tanya, who is reunited with her half-brother Arthur (Paul O’Grady), the result of their father’s liaison with a fancy woman. It was filmed in front of an invited audience at Elstree where, back in the mid-1970s, she recorded Cilla’s World Of Comedy, now newly released on DVD. ‘Judging from the audience reaction,’ she says, ‘I think it’s genuinely funny. So let’s hope it gets the green light for a series.’
For all the fact that she cherrypicks those projects that appeal to her (‘Well, they have to fit round my appetite for popular television. ‘There’s nothing I like better than closing the curtains and being in charge of the remote control.’
So what does she watch? Surprise Surprise, for a start. She fronted the show first time round for nearly two decades. Now it’s in the hands of Holly Willoughby. Doesn’t she find it awkward viewing for strictly personal reasons?
‘Not at all. I love Holly. I think she’s incredible. I’m a great believer in young talent. I’d rather look at her than at me! And she’s got lots of personal warmth. Also, I’m kind of flattered that it’s been brought back. The show was a hit for 20 years, so why shouldn’t it be a hit for somebody else?
‘It’s like the history of the Generation Game. Brucie made it famous but the format was so strong that it still proved popular when Larry Grayson and Jim Davidson each presented it. The show was bigger than the person in charge. A hit show is a hit show.’
She remains a slavish fan of Corrie and, despite its critics, is fond of The X Factor. ‘I probably would have won it hands down if it had been around in my day because I could sing and I had the confidence. I’m amazed at the singing talent we have in Britain today. We’re a small island, nothing like the size of America.’
But she would hate to be on the judging panel. ‘I’m too nice. I was a judge on a show called Your Face Sounds Familiar and I gave everybody 10 out of 10.’
Cilla’s has been an incredible journey, from hat-check girl in The Cavern Club in Liverpool to half a century at the top of the entertainment tree. She could never have foreseen what lay ahead. ‘No,’ she agrees, ‘but I always knew I’d be famous. Or, rather, that’s what I always wanted to be ever since I was put on the kitchen table at three years old and sang On The Good Ship Lollipop when everybody spilled out of the pub into our house.
‘I can still remember liking the applause. I wanted more of that. Later on, I’d come home from school and I’d sing in the bathroom because the acoustics were good. But my father worked nights so he’d be in the room next door trying to get some sleep. I always wanted to do it. What can I say?’
This desire to perform came from her mother. ‘And she could sing too. Her party piece was a song called T For Texas. She had her own stall in St Martin’s Market selling secondhand clothes. She was a well-known figure locally. She wasn’t a thwarted performer and she took great delight in my success.’
Cilla scored her first Number One in 1964 with Anyone Who Had A Heart. ‘Before that I’d appeared alongside The Beatles, Billy J Kramer, The Fourmost and so on, on the same bill. We were a family. Then I was out on the road headlining a tour. I had to adapt to being on my own.
‘I was the youngest female ever to get her own television series [it was in 1968, when she was 24]. I was thrilled, of course, but it did require a lot of adjusting.
‘The boys had been my crutch; they looked after me. It took about 18 months for me to get used to looking after myself. But I was never nervous about performing live. The truth is that I’ve always loved showing off.’
Throughout her career, until his untimely death in 1999 from cancer, Cilla was guided by the unerring good judgement of her adored husband, Bobby Willis. Does she think she would have been as big as star without Bobby as her manager?
‘To be honest, yes. But I couldn’t have done all the deals, looked after all the money without him. So I don’t think my career would have lasted as long without him steering me.
‘What a lot of people don’t know is that Bobby had a good singing voice – he sounded like Johnny Mathis – so much so that he was offered a recording contract. But I gave him an ultimatum: he either went down that route or gave it up and looked after me. There was only room for one ego in our relationship and mine was bigger. I admit it.
‘As it was, he was quite shy. He’d rather be in the background. I was the performer who enjoyed the spotlight. In career terms, Bobby just knew what was right and what was wrong for me. He always used to say that I should make the business work for me rather than the other way round.’
After Cilla’s singing success in the 1960s, television beckoned big time in the 1970s, which dovetailed perfectly with her new role as mother to the couple’s three sons. Robert (now her manager) was born in 1970, Ben in 1974 and Jack in 1980. Ben is now working on The X Factor, clearing all the rights to the music featured. Jack’s an assistant producer at the BBC, working on Panorama.
Cilla has two grandchildren by Robert and his wife Fiona. ‘Max is seven. He played football today and, although his team was beaten, he was still voted man of the match. His younger sister, Alana, is five. She plays the ukulele and goes to ballet class. She was in a show at school recently and sang On The Good Ship Lollipop, which was extra poignant for me.’
When Surprise Surprise began to overlap with Blind Date, Cilla’s light entertainment crown was unassailable. But the dating show, she says, was money for old rope. She’d first seen the Australian version, Perfect Match, on tour and recommended it to an ITV producer who revealed he’d held the UK rights for three years. A pilot hadn’t worked and the idea had been shelved – until Cilla sprinkled her own special magic on it and continued to do so for 18 consecutive years.
‘I absolutely love a live audience,’ she says, a tad superfluously. ‘I just love working with the public. I prefer them to celebs, if I’m honest. It’s why I did panto for so many years. The audience is going to be different with every performance.’ She’s even thinking of asking her great friend, Paul O’Grady, to write a stage play in which they could both perform.
Fifty years at the top and still with a thirst for performing. Shouldn’t she be Dame Cilla by now? ‘What on earth for?’ she asks. ‘For doing exactly what I want to do and enjoying every minute of it? I don’t think so. Anyway,’ she adds, topping up her glass, ‘I’ve already got the OBE. I’m content being an Old Big ’Ead.’
The Very Best Of Cilla Black is released on Parlophone. Back To Black: Cilla, The Authorised Photographic Memoir, is published by Evans Mitchell, priced £19.95.
At 70 – although she looks years younger – the bestselling British female singer of the 1960s and the unrivalled queen of Saturday night shiny-floor television, makes no apology for breaking open the bubbly. ‘I’m worth it,’ she says with a characteristic chuckle, but she means it too.
She has just completed filming the pilot for a potential new sitcom, Led Astray, written by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, who gave the world Birds Of A Feather. Cilla plays former daytime host Tanya, who is reunited with her half-brother Arthur (Paul O’Grady), the result of their father’s liaison with a fancy woman. It was filmed in front of an invited audience at Elstree where, back in the mid-1970s, she recorded Cilla’s World Of Comedy, now newly released on DVD. ‘Judging from the audience reaction,’ she says, ‘I think it’s genuinely funny. So let’s hope it gets the green light for a series.’
For all the fact that she cherrypicks those projects that appeal to her (‘Well, they have to fit round my appetite for popular television. ‘There’s nothing I like better than closing the curtains and being in charge of the remote control.’
So what does she watch? Surprise Surprise, for a start. She fronted the show first time round for nearly two decades. Now it’s in the hands of Holly Willoughby. Doesn’t she find it awkward viewing for strictly personal reasons?
‘Not at all. I love Holly. I think she’s incredible. I’m a great believer in young talent. I’d rather look at her than at me! And she’s got lots of personal warmth. Also, I’m kind of flattered that it’s been brought back. The show was a hit for 20 years, so why shouldn’t it be a hit for somebody else?
‘It’s like the history of the Generation Game. Brucie made it famous but the format was so strong that it still proved popular when Larry Grayson and Jim Davidson each presented it. The show was bigger than the person in charge. A hit show is a hit show.’
She remains a slavish fan of Corrie and, despite its critics, is fond of The X Factor. ‘I probably would have won it hands down if it had been around in my day because I could sing and I had the confidence. I’m amazed at the singing talent we have in Britain today. We’re a small island, nothing like the size of America.’
But she would hate to be on the judging panel. ‘I’m too nice. I was a judge on a show called Your Face Sounds Familiar and I gave everybody 10 out of 10.’
Cilla’s has been an incredible journey, from hat-check girl in The Cavern Club in Liverpool to half a century at the top of the entertainment tree. She could never have foreseen what lay ahead. ‘No,’ she agrees, ‘but I always knew I’d be famous. Or, rather, that’s what I always wanted to be ever since I was put on the kitchen table at three years old and sang On The Good Ship Lollipop when everybody spilled out of the pub into our house.
‘I can still remember liking the applause. I wanted more of that. Later on, I’d come home from school and I’d sing in the bathroom because the acoustics were good. But my father worked nights so he’d be in the room next door trying to get some sleep. I always wanted to do it. What can I say?’
This desire to perform came from her mother. ‘And she could sing too. Her party piece was a song called T For Texas. She had her own stall in St Martin’s Market selling secondhand clothes. She was a well-known figure locally. She wasn’t a thwarted performer and she took great delight in my success.’
Cilla scored her first Number One in 1964 with Anyone Who Had A Heart. ‘Before that I’d appeared alongside The Beatles, Billy J Kramer, The Fourmost and so on, on the same bill. We were a family. Then I was out on the road headlining a tour. I had to adapt to being on my own.
‘I was the youngest female ever to get her own television series [it was in 1968, when she was 24]. I was thrilled, of course, but it did require a lot of adjusting.
‘The boys had been my crutch; they looked after me. It took about 18 months for me to get used to looking after myself. But I was never nervous about performing live. The truth is that I’ve always loved showing off.’
Throughout her career, until his untimely death in 1999 from cancer, Cilla was guided by the unerring good judgement of her adored husband, Bobby Willis. Does she think she would have been as big as star without Bobby as her manager?
‘To be honest, yes. But I couldn’t have done all the deals, looked after all the money without him. So I don’t think my career would have lasted as long without him steering me.
‘What a lot of people don’t know is that Bobby had a good singing voice – he sounded like Johnny Mathis – so much so that he was offered a recording contract. But I gave him an ultimatum: he either went down that route or gave it up and looked after me. There was only room for one ego in our relationship and mine was bigger. I admit it.
‘As it was, he was quite shy. He’d rather be in the background. I was the performer who enjoyed the spotlight. In career terms, Bobby just knew what was right and what was wrong for me. He always used to say that I should make the business work for me rather than the other way round.’
After Cilla’s singing success in the 1960s, television beckoned big time in the 1970s, which dovetailed perfectly with her new role as mother to the couple’s three sons. Robert (now her manager) was born in 1970, Ben in 1974 and Jack in 1980. Ben is now working on The X Factor, clearing all the rights to the music featured. Jack’s an assistant producer at the BBC, working on Panorama.
Cilla has two grandchildren by Robert and his wife Fiona. ‘Max is seven. He played football today and, although his team was beaten, he was still voted man of the match. His younger sister, Alana, is five. She plays the ukulele and goes to ballet class. She was in a show at school recently and sang On The Good Ship Lollipop, which was extra poignant for me.’
When Surprise Surprise began to overlap with Blind Date, Cilla’s light entertainment crown was unassailable. But the dating show, she says, was money for old rope. She’d first seen the Australian version, Perfect Match, on tour and recommended it to an ITV producer who revealed he’d held the UK rights for three years. A pilot hadn’t worked and the idea had been shelved – until Cilla sprinkled her own special magic on it and continued to do so for 18 consecutive years.
‘I absolutely love a live audience,’ she says, a tad superfluously. ‘I just love working with the public. I prefer them to celebs, if I’m honest. It’s why I did panto for so many years. The audience is going to be different with every performance.’ She’s even thinking of asking her great friend, Paul O’Grady, to write a stage play in which they could both perform.
Fifty years at the top and still with a thirst for performing. Shouldn’t she be Dame Cilla by now? ‘What on earth for?’ she asks. ‘For doing exactly what I want to do and enjoying every minute of it? I don’t think so. Anyway,’ she adds, topping up her glass, ‘I’ve already got the OBE. I’m content being an Old Big ’Ead.’
The Very Best Of Cilla Black is released on Parlophone. Back To Black: Cilla, The Authorised Photographic Memoir, is published by Evans Mitchell, priced £19.95.