Nation mourns entertainer Cilla Black, 72

I thought she was fab.

Black was made an OBE in 1997 and last year was given a special award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), which called her an “icon”.

“Her mother went the same way”.

As well as emotional reunions of long-lost relatives, the show featured “Cillagrams”, in which she again turned up at a location unannounced, this time marking some special occasion with a song.

“She just said, “Look at me, I’m a wreck”.

“I was with my boyfriend and we spotted her in the duty free area”.

When her music career began at Liverpool’s famous Cavern Club, she performed alongside such acts as The Beatles and Gerry and the Pacemakers.

A source close to the investigation in Spain told The Sun: “There’s no conclusive autopsy results yet but the main theory right now is that she had a dizzy turn after going from an air-conditioned room into the midday heat and losing her balance”.

A Spanish police spokeswoman confirmed that Black had died at her Spanish home in Estepona on the Costa del Sol.

Ahead of the post-mortem examination, police in Spain said “everything at this stage is pointing towards her death being the result of natural causes”. At this time, she also worked as a waitress in the Zodiac coffee lounge, where she met her future husband and manager Bobby Willis.

On hearing the news, McCartney described it as “such a shock” on Twitter.

She rose to fame in the 1960s as an associate of The Beatles and their manager Brian Epstein.

Cilla was born Priscilla Maria Veronica White on May 27, 1943 in Liverpool, where she grew up.

“I was due to visit her at her home in Spain this week…”

“It is with deep sorrow that I confirm today the passing of singer and TV personality Cilla Black”, Nick Fiveash said in an emailed statement.

“From first meeting her as a cloakroom girl at the Cavern in Liverpool, to seeing her many times since, she always had a fun loving dignity that made her a great pleasure to be around”. She always kept in touch and always said, ‘How’s it going? She would not have suffered, it added. She was holding on very tightly to the gentleman she was with, who I believe may have been her son.

2001: She performed as the ageing stripper from the musical Gypsy at the Royal Variety Performance, with pals Paul O’Grady and Barbara Windsor. In 1967 she signed a 63,000 contract to present her own series, Cilla, on BBC Television. That was the thing about Cilla, she always looked spot-on.

The writer of that drama, Jeff Pope, told HuffPostUK last year that Cilla had had to psyche herself up to watch the story of her life on screen, but that she’d been very honest with him when they sat down together to discuss what route the story should take.