A blind date with the unexpected
Recalls how it was a lorra lorra laughs for Cilla Black with the launch of Surprise! Surprise!
POP singer Cilla Black proved a TV natural when she made her debut 40 years ago presenting Surprise! Surprise!
The Anyone Who Had A Heart star, who was friends with The Beatles, launched the light entertainment series on ITV on May 6, 1984, and quickly became a telly favourite with viewers.
It was filmed in front of a studio audience and saw Cilla reuniting families with long-lost loved ones, making wishes come true and surprising members of the public and people in the studio.
She also sang the theme song and would “surprise” people by turning up to perform for them in person.
The show made Cilla one of television’s most popular presenters and it ended up notching up 14 series and 138 episodes.
Holly Willoughby later hosted a revamped version of the show in 2012, and Cilla Black herself appeared on the show as a guest the following year.
Bob Carolgees, of Spit the Dog fame, Christopher Biggins, Gordon Burns and Tessa Sanderson were regulars on the original series with Cilla, while celebrity guests over the years included Dame Barbara Windsor, Sir Cliff Richard, Lorraine Kelly, Michael Ball, Joe Pasquale, David Hasselhoff and boxing champ Henry Cooper.
The Spice Girls also popped up on the show in one of their first TV appearances.
Cilla once said: “I wanted to be a star from a very, very early age. I knew from the age of three that I wanted to go into showbusiness.”
The Liverpool-born star, who passed away in 2015 at her home in the south of Spain at the age of 72, also enjoyed television success with ITV matchmaking show Blind Date, which ran for 18 years, and she became the highest paid woman on television.
ZARA Mcdermott’s behind the scenes look at Ibiza continues tonight, revealing a darker side of the island that revellers and holidaymakers rarely see.
Tonight, she’s learning more about a crimewave being fed by social media, as burglars are finding Instagram photos of swanky holiday villas and studying the layout of buildings before making their move.
Zara even accompanies the police as they attend a terrifying break-in, where the family are still inside the house.
Talking to security experts, she discovers that cleaners are regularly being bribed to leave windows open, making it easy for criminals to stroll in, and innocent tourists are inadvertently playing into their hands. It’s not just robbers exploiting social media networks though, as Zara reveals holidaymakers are being targeted by drug dealers as soon as they post online about arriving on the island.
She puts herself in danger to learn more about where the drugs are coming from, and how they are being circulated.
Beyond crime, Zara is also exploring the wider impact of social media and how it is shaping the world’s changing perception of Ibiza.
On the one hand it’s still a luxury destination, and she meets a businessman who has created an experience specifically targeting influencers. His hotel provides a ‘millionaire for the day’ experience in return for promotional posts, which the local authorities hail as being part of the new ‘Brand Ibiza’.
But on another part of the island, a successful content creator is out to capture far less glossy material, not designed to enhance Ibiza’s image.