Cilla Black: from pop star to queen of TV

Media reports citing local police said she passed away at her home in Estepona near Marbella in southern Spain.

She told the BBC: “I was only with her a couple of weeks ago”. Cilla was the sister of Ms Roberston’s late father, George White. After winning Britain’s Opportunity Knocks show six times he was also invited on to her show and impressed enough to be invited to perform at the singer’s charity shows, including one for Nicaragua at the Royal Albert Hall.

In a statement, he said: “Such a shock to hear about Cilla’s passing”.

“She always felt like a friend in your living room when she was on TV”.

She was also a bridesmaid at Cilla’s wedding to Bobby Willis in 1969. She was aged 67. “But when I was out with her, I would see people stopping and looking as they recognised who she was”.

LONDON (AP) — Big-voiced British singer Cilla Black, a product of Beatles-era Liverpool who became a national treasure over a 50-year music and television career, has died.

Her success was global but not transatlantic; her rendition of the closing theme to Alfie (1966) was not used in the film and her attempts to forge a path in cinema proved to be a blind alley: a starring role alongside RSC stalwarts including David Warner and Elizabeth Spriggs in the daft-as-a-brush Work Is a Four Letter Word (1968), an hallucinogenic satire of aphrodisiac mushrooms, never came back to haunt her: she may well have fared better if she’d taken the role of Michael Caine’s girlfriend in The Italian Job the following year, but failed to reach an agreement on her fee.

A spokesperson for Spanish police said: “We are still awaiting autopsy results but everything at this stage is pointing towards her death being the result of natural causes”.

Tributes have poured in for the star, who reportedly died after flying to Spain with her son Robert.

“Details of her death will be announced following the coroner’s report”.

Cilla with Christopher Biggins in 2002 (Picture: PA) “All our love goes to her family so shocked and saddened for you xx”.

“She was good fun and everybody seemed to like her. She’s such a strong lady”, O’Grady added.

Born in Liverpool, she transformed herself from a successful singer in the 1960s to the front woman on shows such as Blind Date and Surprise!

Black was married to Bobby Willis, who became her manager and who died in 1999.

Her songs Anyone Who Had a Heart and You’re My World were both number one hits in 1964.