Cilla Black

That record wasn't really an original one, was it? In other words, it was pretty well a copy of one that had been made in America.

Oh, yes. Well, I wouldn't say a [copy] really. Um, I did My version of Deion Morrick's Anyone Who Had a Heart, and recorded it here because it was so beautiful, you know. The song was. Very pretty, and the moment I heard it, you know, I just had to record it.

Do you want to open up your career by acting as well?

I'd like to try. I I did a part in, um, Joan the Pacemaker film not so long ago. And I hated the singing bit because it was like doing a television only ten hours longer, very long hours doing film work. But I loved the acting bit, it was great.

What is your first love – singer, comedienne, or presenter?

Oh, singer Comedienne, me? I think so. It terrifies me. I can only be funny with people that I it's an awful thing to say, that I enjoy being with. And an awful lot of these show business functions I hate I hate the people that are there, so I can't be funny. I know I shouldn't say that, but really, no, I prefer to be known as a singer. The epitaph would say singer first of all. Absolutely, yes. That's all I've ever, ever wanted to do.

You really wanted to be very rich when you were small – where did that come from?

Oh, well the burning desire came from uh way, way back in Scotland Road in Liverpool. when we lived behind a barber shop and next door to a Chinese laundry. We never had our own front door because the flat was above the barber shop, so I either had to go through the barber shop to get to our kitchen, or behind the Midland Bank. So I never had a front door that I went in. Uh but my mother used to take me oh just to to escape... to the films and it was fantastic to see people like Doris Day and Natalie Wood talking about their backyard. And it was like five acres of green grass and all these lovely trees and flowers and ... Our back yard was where the outside loo was and where we kept the coal, you know. So, um, yes, I did wanna I wanted I wanted a little bit of that.

Those early sixties years in Liverpool have a mystique attached to them – were they actually very special?

They were very, very special. I didn't think that they were as special as what people are saying, because I was living my life then. It had to be special because Brian Epstein came on the scene and sort of paved the way with the Beatles. And then that's when he might have been talking to John and saying, You know, I've got all these fellas like Jerry and the Pacemakers. Do you know of any girls would do all right? and he'd probably say, Well, there's only one, there's Scylla and that's probably how I was discovered in a way. I actually did my audition with the Beatles and Brian turned me down first off. … And it wasn't until oh nine months later after The Beatles that I was in a club called The Blue Angel singing um Bye Bye Blackbird… and he was I didn't know he was in the audience, and he was he liked me. The rest was history. And yes, it was a very, very special time. But if this is what I'd been working for and hoping for all my life, I just stuck to it like a duck takes to water.

You had a nose job – why did you do it?

I tried to keep it secret. But it was the worst thing, because it was the staff at the hospital who said, Oh, guess who we got? … my mother was upset … She asked me what I paid for it, and she literally said, like on the television, You was robbed. She was very upset because she said twenty five you … Made your first record of nineteen and you've been the biggest thing since sliced bread with the nose that you've got. What do you want to change it all now?

How long did you think it would last – life at the top?

I was uh again twenty five. Everything happened when I was twenty five. I'd had my nose done and I I remember feeling quite desperate to have children. And I I you know, I I thought I knew Bobby was the right one for me. And I thought, this is silly, you know. It was in the days when. Eva Pop Singer Got Married. The career ended overnight. So, I mean, I fully appreciated all that, and that, but then the need for me to get married and have children was far, far greater. to my loyalties to the fans. Well, it only lasts supposed to last three years, and there was I I was five years later. And it went on from strength to strength I mean, I I remember on the B B C shows, I was on the television. Alive, I was practically giving birth to our Robert and Ben.

You've given your children everything you never had – but has doing that created its own problems? [They speak differently from you, don't they?]

Well, they're bilingual actually. If they talk to me, I mean, you know, like our little Jack, you know, he says, Oh, I think, you know, can we go and have. Can I have me bath now? But I mean uh during the week if Penny's there it'll be bath, you know, things like that.