Dundee woman’s tribute to TV star Cilla Black

SINGER Sir Cliff Richard will pay his own musical tribute, performing his song Faithful One at the start of the service to celebrate Black’s life and mourn the passing of one of Britain’s most enduring and best loved entertainers.

Further details about Cilla Black’s funeral have been unveiled ahead of the ceremony taking place later today. “You’ve no idea. She was one of my closest friends and I absolutely adored her”.

“She was the Queen of Liverpool, she was”.

She told how she wouldn’t want her children to go into showbusiness and how she loved buying clothes.

‘Now the problem was coming out, she said, “How am I going to get out of this?”

He ended his speech by saying: ‘I know all of our souls will be reunited together Cilla, this is just a hiccup in our relationship’. The city’s spike-crowned Metropolitan cathedral could easily have been filled, but the family had opted for the small parish church in Woolton where, as a young woman, she married Bobby Willis. I said, “Just swing around and slide out”, and she slid out and that’s when I realised she did have attractive legs, quite fantastic.

Earlier, thousands of fans stood in silence as her coffin passed by, some wiping tears away as the cortege made the two-mile journey to the church in the Liverpool suburb of Woolton. An inquest heard she died accidentally after falling and hitting her head. I grew up in the 60’s and loved her music.

He said: “Even though mum was a star for over 50 years, she was always more than happy to have a good laugh at herself”.

He spoke of the entertainer being reunited with her late, much loved husband.

Comedian Jimmy Tarbuck, a close friend of Black, led the Prayers of the Faithful, during which he called her “our treasured friend, Liverpool’s Cinderella”.

He met her recently when she returned to film a documentary.

“And for those whose lives our Cilla has touched. I introduced her to the finer things of New York – like bars, burlesque shows and nightclubs with such a reputation that taxi drivers were always unsure whether to drop us off”, he said to laughter. “She will be sadly missed”.

It is not yet known whether Cilla’s friends, the two surviving Beatles Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, will attend, although they have been in contact with her family.

Black, 72, who died after a fall at her Spanish villa on August 1, was buried alongside her mother Priscilla and father John at a private ceremony at Allerton Cemetery in Liverpool.