I couldn’t of course, because I kept going back to what I’d just told him. It was ridiculous. It was stupid. Too ridiculous and too stupid to even consider. I’d spoken to Cilla just over a week ago. She had the usual cracks and creaks, the way all us oldies do. But nothing more. She’d actually started some new painkillers for her arthritis and she was doing well. It was helping. So she’d been getting ready to go to Spain when we talked. We’d made plans for her return. She’d not been to our old haunt, the refurbished Ivy restaurant, since it re-opened a few months ago. So we’d made a date to go in September. She’d also talked of us taking another, longer holiday in the New Year. ‘When you’ve finished your panto you and Neil must come back to Barbados with me,’ she’d said. So she was planning a long way ahead. A heart attack? It didn’t seem real. It couldn’t be real. But I had to know.
I rang Cilla. Her phone rang and rang. No reply.
I sat in my kitchen. I could feel my pulse racing faster. Could this actually be true?
I rang Robert, Cilla’s son. Again there was no reply but I got the tone that said he was overseas – in Spain with his mum, I was sure. I made one last call. I rang Martin, a former producer on Blind Date and one of Cilla’s loyal ‘walkers’ she’d go to theatres and parties with after Bobby’s death.
‘Have you heard anything about Cilla?’ I asked.
He hadn’t. But he said he’d try Robert too. I sat back. It was nearly midday and the sun seemed harsher now.
I got ready for my lunch, half distracted and totally convinced there should be something else I should do, someone else I should call.
Then I got in my car. It was still such a lovely day so I had the roof down as I motored towards the West End. I was joining two friends at the Ivy. So, of course, that kept my mind firmly on Cilla, and the date I had there with her next month. A heart attack? Ridiculous, I kept saying. Ridiculous.
My phone went again as I approached Covent Garden. I answered it on the hands-free. It was my dear friend Nichola. She told me the news straight away. ‘Cilla’s dead,’ she had said flatly.
I almost crashed the car. I screamed out loud. I gasped for air, suffocating. Gripping the wheel and looking in the rear view mirror I managed to get the car to the side of the road and I stopped. Was I on a yellow line, a double yellow or a red line? I didn’t know and I didn’t care. Cilla’s dead. Two words. The worst of words.
And this time I had to believe them. This time it wasn’t ridiculous. I thought, suddenly, of all those other people I had lost in recent years. All those friends, all those faces who had left the stage too soon. And the exodus wasn’t over. Now Cilla was dead too.
‘How? Where? What happened?’ The questions flooded out of me as I spoke, still hands-free, into what must have looked like thin air.
It was a heart attack, the words came floating back to me. We might know more later on.
The call ended and I sat in my car at the side of this busy central London road. I felt horribly vulnerable with the top down. But nothing seemed quite real. And as I tried to get my breath, to gather my thoughts and to decide what to do my phone rang again. It wasn’t going to stop that day, or the day after that.
The first call was from Joan Collins. She was in the South of France. Moments ago she had heard something on the radio. Was it true? I told her all I knew. We were quiet for several moments, not speaking, not ending the call. If we didn’t speak, then maybe it wasn’t happening. But it was. We talked of the last time we had both seen and spoken to Cilla. We talked of the plans we had both made with her. The dates in our diaries. The fact that we couldn’t understand or comprehend this.
I then called my partner Neil, of course, who was in Hong Kong for work and we just talked of how much fun we’d had last time we’d all caught up with Cilla.
So many other calls flooded in that day. I spoke to Paul O’Grady, another of Cilla’s loyal, loyal pals. I spoke to John Madejski, the tycoon and Reading football boss and a dear friend of Cilla’s. I spoke to Cliff Richard from his home in Portugal. All our conversations were awful, strange. We went round in circles, disbelieving, uncomprehending. With Paul a rush of reminiscences flooded out. I reminded him of the time we’d all been with Cilla at her place in Spain just after his heart attack. The doctors had told him to stop smoking, of course. He said he would. But as I sat in the sun with Cilla one long, hot afternoon I swear I smelt cigarette smoke. Paul, we guessed, was having a sneaky ciggie round the corner.
‘He won’t listen to me any more,’ I told Cilla. ‘You’ll have to tell him.’
So she had. In that no-nonsense voice that always came from the heart. She’d told Paul off the way his mum might have done, or his teacher, or his doctor or, of course, as his friend. And that was what we had all lost, a true, honest friend.
Between phone calls I headed home. I’d agreed to speak about Cilla on the radio and ITV were sending a car for me at 5.00 the following morning to talk on TV as well. I’d agreed in a daze. I wanted the world to know what a wonderful woman we had lost. And I wanted the distraction as well. If I was talking then I couldn’t be thinking.
By the afternoon of the Monday I’d had between two and three hundred calls, texts and emails. And I’d noticed something. The people closest to me knew that Cilla and I had been like an old married couple sometimes. So they were asking after me. Was I OK? Could they do anything to help me? It was so lovely. But of course none of this was about me. As I knew later that same afternoon when I spoke to Robert.
I told him I was so very, very sorry. And he told me he didn’t think his mum had suffered. But he had. I soon learned that he had. As we spoke I realised he was in shock, as we all were. He couldn’t yet take it all in. Cilla had arrived at the villa that weekend – later we’d see a photo of her posing with fans at Malaga airport, ever the star, looking fabulous in leopard-skin.
She had a lovely sun trap off her bedroom – there was nothing my Cilla loved more than the sun – and she’d been there when he’d shouted to her in the afternoon. ‘I’m going to do some shopping,’ he’d yelled.
Cilla hadn’t replied, he told me. But that was normal. She had music on a lot and we all knew her hearing wasn’t great. She hated wearing the hearing aid she’d been given – so most of the time she didn’t use it. I smiled, in spite of the sadness, as Robert told me this. Cilla’s poor hearing had been a real problem lately. It was isolating her from people – because she wasn’t as keen on crowded, noisy places and she wasn’t as comfortable on the phone.
‘You’re the only one I can ever hear, Biggins,’ she had told me. My foghorn of a voice had its uses. So we’d spoken on the phone a lot.
‘Love you lots,’ was what I’d boom at the end of all our phone calls.
‘Love you more,’ was what she would always reply.
But back to that awful Monday, talking to Robert. He told me he’d got the shopping. He’d called upstairs on his return but had thought his mum was probably sleeping. He’d had a swim then he’d gone to wake her. He tried the door after knocking on it and getting no reply. It was locked. Again, we both knew that wasn’t unusual. Cilla had often been in the villa on her own. She locked doors behind her. Who wouldn’t?
But Robert had known, then, that something was wrong. So that poor boy had had to smash down his mother’s door, terrified of what he’d find on the other side. What he’d found had been Cilla, on the ground between the balcony and the bedroom. We talked for a little longer. Then we said goodbye.
‘If there’s anything I can do… ’ I’d said at the end of the call. The same thing people had said to me. It’s the circle of kindness. The reminder of simple humanity.
Robert told me his brothers, Jack and Ben, were on their way and said he’d call if anything changed. I hung up. I sat back. I thought back thirty years to those crazy, unrepeatable days when it had all begun for me and Cilla. I thought of the first time we had met, when we had been work colleagues on the biggest prime-time show on ITV. We could have
stayed work colleagues and gone our separate ways when the cameras stopped rolling. Instead, for some magical reason, we had become lifelong friends.
I’d been up in Newcastle working when ITV super-producer Alan Boyd asked to meet me. He had taken me out to dinner. Marvellous. And he had put that amazing proposal to me. ‘We want you to co-star with a big star for a huge new Saturday and Sunday night show on ITV,’ he had told me. He ran through the ideas they had for the programme. It was pure showbusiness. It was entertainment every step of the way. It sounded quite extraordinary. And they wanted me to be on it! I was so incredibly excited, dazed, confused and thrilled that I agreed without even asking the vital question – who would I be appearing alongside?
‘Don’t you want to know who else is on the show?’ he’d asked at the end of the meal.
‘Of course!’ I’d said.
‘Cilla Black.’
I nearly fell off my chair. I nearly fainted. I’d grown up listening to Cilla Black. She was wonderful. She’d had this amazing career, she had dominated the pop charts. And after taking something like ten years out to raise her family – well done Cilla, for that, I say – she’d just come back with a bang. She’d been a guest on Wogan and she’d been a sensation. She’d been funny, fantastic and utterly charming. She’d romped away with the whole show. I’d seen it. I loved her. And back then, the likes of Alan and David Bell at ITV knew light entertainment backwards. It was in their blood. They knew a star when they saw one. They knew Cilla was a star. So they’d cooked up the idea for Surprise Surprise.
I met Cilla for the very first time as our first proper rehearsals approached. I’ll admit it. I was terrified – of her, of the show, of everything. But you know what? Cilla and I had a big, warm hug and I realised she was nervous too. The show was a huge deal for both of us. And somehow, maybe without words, we knew we’d support each other. We’d help each other. We could tune in to what we were both thinking. Without words, under the lights of a burning hot stage, we could communicate. The vast, big-budget prime-time show with its live studio audience would never be easy. But we’d do it together.
And there were three of us in the marriage, of course. For Bobby was always there. The rock that Cilla’s life stood upon. Dear, wonderful, Bobby. He was there every step of Cilla’s journey. When she was on a stage, he was in the wings. When she was at a meeting, he was at her side. When she was having her hair done, he was in the hairdressers too! It worked so well, that marriage. They were two people who really did exist as one – Cilla hardly ever carried money, because Bobby was always there for everything. So that’s why, so many years later, Bobby’s illness hit Cilla so hard. I remember visiting him at their home in Denham once, when the cancer was really taking hold. For some reason I can’t remember, some in-joke we’d enjoyed at the time, I had brought him a six-foot tall inflatable plant. He’d laughed so much as we all blew it up that he’d had to go and have a lie down.
Cilla had been so vulnerable after his loss. She’d never been on her own. I remember the day he died. Somehow we had got her home. We gave her a drink. We respected what she wanted and left her alone. And later that night she had called me. She had been in a terrible state. ‘Biggins, I don’t know how to feed the dogs,’ she had cried. Bobby had looked after everything. But Cilla had been strong. She had that Liverpudlian grit. In the end she picked herself up. She made an amazing recovery.
Years later, we all had mixed feelings when ITV announced it was making Cilla, a TV drama out of her life. I thought it was wrong. I thought it was disrespectful. Sheridan Smith was amazing in the role, by all accounts, and I know lots of people asked what Cilla thought about seeing herself portrayed on screen by someone else. But this wasn’t what bothered Cilla. What hurt was seeing Bobby portrayed on screen by someone else. Maybe the writers, the producers and others didn’t think of that. But that was the thing that could hurt the most.
Today, with Cilla gone, I can focus on the good times. I’m so proud of her three boys, Robert, Ben and Jack. They’re men now with lives and families of their own. Cilla loved being a grandmother. What a life. Two amazing careers, as a chart-topper and as a TV mega-star. And as a wife, mum, grandmother and true friend to boot. Not bad, for a hat-check girl from Liverpool. And the good times? They include her 60th birthday. She had thrown a big party at her house in Denham with a marquee and lots of her favourite Dom Pérignon. What do you buy Cilla Black as a present? We’d all scratched our heads. Then someone had come up with a very naughty idea. We’d bought her a Rampant Rabbit. And if you don’t know what that is, then you’re not alone. Cilla didn’t either. She opened it, long after the party guests had gone at about 4am, with her dear pal Pat and her housekeeper Penny at her side. She’d screamed with laughter when she realised it was a sex toy. And she made us laugh about it for years – because she told us he had put it, still in its box, never used, in her bedside table. It was seen there, years later, when she had been burgled and her room had been turned upside down. ‘Forget the jewellery. I bet that’s the one thing they remember finding beside Cilla Black’s bed!’ she hooted.
So goodbye Cilla. Yes, she really had said those things about 75 being the perfect age to go. We all make jokes and say things like that, us oldies and crumblies. The thought of me living another 30 years fills me with horror sometimes. We want a break from the aches and pains sometimes. But 72 was too, too soon.
Cilla, I remind myself, will be in heaven now, reunited with Bobby and with a glass of champagne in her hand. So many other lovely people are there too. And Cilla, like so many of the others, lived life to the full while she was here. I had her friendship, I have my memories and I’ve learned her lesson. Grab every opportunity, take every chance and enjoy every moment. They won’t all work out the way you want them to. But if you don’t try you’ll never know. And if you try and fail you should at least get a story out of it. You should get a memory and a fair few laughs before you dust yourself down, pick yourself up and start all over again. Make the most of every sunny day. That’s what Cilla taught me. So that’s what I’m doing today.
‘He won’t make old bones,’ said Grannie Biggins when I was born. I proved her wrong …
My mum and dad, Pam and Bill, on their wedding day. The honeymoon was interrupted by Dad’s call-up.
With my mother and grandfather.
Biggins beach babes. With my mum and dad, at the seaside. Whatever our circumstances, the three of us always made the most of what we had.
With Grannie Biggins and my dad. It was from Grannie Biggins that I learned how to be a straight-talker.
Proving that I had outgrown the ‘weak constitution’ with which I was born.
St Probus School for Boys – it was at the school’s theatre that I first fell in love with performing on the stage. My pal John Brown is pictured on the left of the left-hand picture.
An early triumph!
My small but perfectly formed role as Jenks in the RSC’s production of London Assurance.
With Bea Aston, the woman who became my wife. We are still great friends.
My role in She Stoops to Conquer was my first proper taste of acting – and after that I was completely addicted.
The wonderful Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.
With Jeremy Irons and Julie Hallam before we all departed for our honeymoon!
I had great fun in TV dramas such as Upstairs Downstairs.
The first production I ever directed – The Orchestra by Jean Anouilh.
Oh Puck! Playing the lovable sprite in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre – a wonderful venue, but one that is packed with hazards for actors!
My very first panto, Mother Goose in Darlington. Once I had been initiated as a pantomime dame, there was no turning back.
Extraordinarily happy times working on Rentaghost.
With the tremendous Barbara Windsor in Guys and Dolls – she was Miss Adelaide and I was Nathan Detroit.
(© Andrew Mardell)
(© Rex Features)
Some of my dearest showbiz pals.
Liza Goddard plays Anne Boleyn to my King Henry VIII.
With the incredibly talented Bonnie Langford.
Neil and I having fun with Cilla.
With legend of stage and screen, Julie Andrews.
I couldn’t believe it when Michael Aspel pulled out his red book on me! I had such fun on This Is Your Life.
Those famous Margaret Thatcher photographs. What on earth were we talking about? Dennis? Cecil Parkinson?
Showing Her Majesty around backstage – this was the ‘Puck’s shoe’ occasion.
Happy times with Neil. The photograph on the right shows us on the day of our civil partnership ceremony
I finally got my chance to play Baron Bomburst in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at the London Palladium. Louise Gold was my Baroness.
(© Tristram Kenton)
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