‘Our’ Cilla for the past 50 years
From the tough part of Liverpool, she shouldn’t have had recording success at the age of 20, top-billing in the West End, and TV dominance. In 1964 ‘Anyone Who Had A Heart’, went straight to number one, selling 100,000 copies a day and making her the biggest-selling female singer of the 1960s. Fifty years on from being signed by Brian Epstein, the entrepreneurial genius who sold The Beatles and the Mersey sound to the world, shouldn’t Cilla be putting her feet up? She laughs. “I’ve been working on a sitcom pilot with Paul O’Grady. I want to retire, but nobody will let me.”
Cilla was not the most beautiful, nor the most talented, of the working-class stars who shaped the 1960s, yet she’s one of the most loved. Even her name, Black, is actually White.
