Great, no knickers! said lennon as i walked down the stairs
Just one of Cilla’s cheeky encounters with the Fab Four, as recalled in her joyous memoirs
Brian had arranged for my U.S. debut to be on the Ed Sullivan show, America’s biggest variety programme. But it started badly: the act before me was a troupe of trained chimps that were supposed to ride motorbikes around a track.
The studio was too small and the chimps kept crashing. Then they started fighting, in their frilly boy and girl uniforms. Then it got even more physical … Ed was horrified.
His show went out to 80 million God-fearing Americans. He told the cameras to cut straight to me, and, before I was ready, he was giving me the big build-up: ‘Now we have a great Welsh singer, from Wales in England. Cilla Black!’
Back home, Brian was treating me as wonderfully as ever. For my 24th birthday in 1967, he arranged for my name to be spelled out in lights over Piccadilly Circus.
He got me a West End role, opposite Frankie Howerd in Way Out In Piccadilly, a revue by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. Frankie used to tease me for being flat-chested — he called me ‘the girl with two backs’. And then he had the nerve to tell everyone I was ‘common as muck’.
But what Brian really wanted for me was my own TV show. He was so excited when he fixed up a deal with the BBC — and crestfallen when I turned it down. There were too many strings attached: they wanted me to be the Eurovision Song entrant, but Sandie Shaw had won the previous year and I knew there wasn’t a hope of a British girl winning two years running.
BOBBY and I went on holiday to Portugal. We were sitting in a village bar overlooking the Gulf of Cadiz, sharing a bottle of champagne with Tom Jones, when a waiter hurried over and blurted out: ‘Your manager’s dead.’ I was devastated. It took me months to come to terms with Brian’s death. To this day, I’m convinced it was an accident. He was found on his bed, dead from an overdose, but it couldn’t have been deliberate. It just couldn’t.
Bobby became worried at how hard I took it. He prescribed work, and lots of it, to get me back on my feet. So we went back to the BBC, and told them I’d do the show.
All my friends crowded round to make it a success: Tom, Ringo, Lulu, Frankie, and comedians like Les Dawson and Spike Milligan too. I sang Moon River with Henry Mancini himself. Among the firstnight telegrams was one from Gracie Fields, which I treasure.
There was an uproar at the BBC over my studio warm-ups, though all I did was sing a few raunchy pub songs with the audience, to get a friendly ambience going.
By 1969, Bobby told me that, though Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise were said to be the highestpaid artistes at the BBC, the real bill-topper was me, because they had to split their fee between them.
But it wasn’t enough. Bobby came back one day from a meeting at the BBC’s offices at Portland Place and said the executives had discussed me as though I was just a packet of soap powder: something to be sold.
It confirmed what I knew: this was a ruthless business, and the party wasn’t going to last for ever.
No more white lies: I had my Bobby, but I needed something else. I wanted to be a mother.
WHAT’S It All About? by Cilla Black is published by Ebury, £8.99. © Cilla Black 2003. Offer price £6.74 (25 per cent discount) until August 15. Order at mailbookshop.co.uk, p&p free on orders over £12. The fee for this article is being donated to Great Ormond Street Hospital on behalf of the author’s estate. Readers who wish to donate to the hospital should visit gosh.org/donate or send a cheque made out to Great Ormond Street Children’s Charity to Great Ormond Street Hospital, 40 Bernard Street, London WC1N 1LE, marked Supporters’ Services and quoting Cilla’s name.