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Why we’ll miss Cilla.
Pioneering 1960s singer, contemporary of The Beatles, highest paid chat show host on British television and one of the most enduring stars of British pop’s heyday, here's ‘our Cilla’.
She always took her chip pan with her when she went out to her Spanish holiday home.
She picked Bob Newhart as one of her Desert Island Discs – but not the driving instructor monologue, the one in which Walter Raleigh discovers tobacco.
She always wanted to be rich as growing up she never had her own front door.
Even when she was a hugely successful artist she carried on doing summer seasons at Great Yarmouth or Scarborough so her children could enjoy their school holidays on the beach.
After Cilla had her nose job her mother told her “you was robbed”.
She didn’t see why people felt she should give up performing when she married. "I don't think I'd ever give up the business because I was married," she said. "I couldn't. The way I look at it is this - the Queen hasn't done so badly and she travels more than anyone."
When she did her first national tour she thought Carlisle was near Chester and wondered why the coach was heading towards Scotland.
John Lennon called her Cyril.
Despite hosting Blind Date she described herself as a ‘rubbish matchmaker’, both on and off TV.
She said, at the age of 69, “I still love being Cilla.”
Listen to Cilla's 1964 and 1988 appearances on Desert Island Discs or download her Inheritance Tracks.
