WHATS NOW ? SO SO SAD'' THE SUPER STAR CILLA BLACK HATUNAE ' R.I.P. MY HERO '' YANI NIMEJIFUNZA MENGI SANA KUTOKA KWA HUYU MAMA TANGU NIJE UK 1994 ' MAISHA NI KUSAIDIANA SHE HELP WATU WENGI KUISHI MAISHA YA USUPA STAA '' RUWA MANGI''

MLIOPO HUKO HOME TANZANIA ''MNAWEZA MSIJUE NAHUZUNIKA KUHUSU NANI'' SASA HICHI KIPINDI NILIPOKUJA UK 1994 NDIYO KIPINDI PEKEE NILIKUWA NATIZAMA'' YANI I LOVE IT'' NA KINAFUNDISHA NA KUCHEKESHA MNO'' CILLA SHE IS JUST LIKE ME'' SHE LOVE PEOPLE TO HAVE  GOOD TIME NA KUSAIDIA WATU WAKAWAIDA KUISHI MAISHA YA WATU WA MATAWI YA JUU'' I WILL MISS YOU MAMA YANGU '' ASANTE KWA KILA KITU'' YES HAKUNA KISICHO NA MWISHO PEOPLE'' SO ENJOY MAISHA YAKO UNAPOJINAFASI ''HUWEZI KUJUA KESHO UTAJIKUTA WAPI NA UKIFANYA NINI'' #NGACHOKA

A Cilla, in showbiz slang, is a magnum of champagne — the kind that admirers would send over to her table whenever she appeared in public.

Champagne was famously her favourite tipple. But more than that, it matched her personality: glamorous, effervescent and overflowing with fun.

For the Sixties superstar and friend of The Beatles, who enjoyed No 1 hits with Anyone Who Had A Heart and You’re My World, the champagne lifestyle was a world away from her upbringing on Liverpool’s toughest street, Scotland Road in the heart of the docklands.

She grew up above a barber’s on the ‘Scottie Road’, in a flat so cramped that it didn’t have an indoor toilet or even a front door. The family had to go in and out through the shop below or via the Chinese laundry next-door.

Born Priscilla White in 1943, she lived with her older brothers George and John, her younger brother Allan, their mother (also called Priscilla) and their Irish father John, a docker whose dark, Brylcreemed hair and highly polished boots earned him the nickname Shiner.

The whole family loved music. The brothers fought over the Dansette record-player, listening to doo-wop, trad jazz and Frank Sinatra. #

Their ‘Mam’, a natural soprano, loved singing along to operatic arias on the radio, and Shiner brought his pals round every Saturday night after the pubs closed, to belt out raucous country songs and music hall numbers.

Cilla would crouch on the stairs, listening — until one night her father caught her and, for a joke, made her stand on the kitchen table. ‘All right, Queen,’ he said, ‘you sing something.’

The precocious five-year-old obliged, wailing the Al Jolson show tune Mammy to whoops of applause. ‘From that moment on,’ she said in 1964 as her career took off, ‘I truly believed I was going to be the Shirley Temple of the North!’

Her ambition to be a star gave her a split personality in her teens. 

There was Priscilla, the dutiful Catholic girl who earned a prize for her good attendance record at school, St Anthony’s, and who went on to Anfield Commercial College to study shorthand and typing. When she went on dates, her boyfriends always had to see her home by 10pm.

Cilla worked in Liverpool's clubs - including the Cavern Club, left. After enjoying success, she was pictured reading her newspaper cuttings with her mother and brother, right''

Cilla grew up in this flat above a barber's shop on the tough Scotland Road in the heart of Liverpool's docklands '

After enjoying a career spanning more than five decades, her fame bought her this mansion in Denham, Buckinghamshire 

Her famous friends in the Sixties included Gerry Marsden, left, and Ringo Starr, right, who encouraged her to be a star from the beginning

And there was Cilla, who dyed her hair flame-red with a seven-penny rinse from Woolworth’s aged 13, and who sneaked out of the flat, after her boyfriends brought her home, to boogie and jive until the small hours at the notorious dance halls, the Rialto and the Empire.

As the Merseybeat boom took off in the early Sixties, Cilla was at the forefront, always clamouring to climb on stage with the bands and belt out rock ’n’ roll numbers.

Her first appearance was with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes — then featuring Ringo Starr on drums — and she raised the atmosphere at the Iron Door club to a frenzy as she launched into the Peggy Lee hit Fever.

Ringo was so impressed that her guest appearances became a regular highlight, as she duetted with him on a rocking Shirelles song called Boys. Budding music entrepreneur Tony Cartwright, who went on to manage Tom Jones, spotted her, too.

Cilla embraced Sixties fashion, modelling a 'baby doll' dress. She was known for her voluminous red hair'' 

A rare informal snap of Cilla, by then a mother-of-two sunning herself in 1975. She married husband Bobby and had three sons 

The number was originally intended for Dionne Warwick, but Cilla’s version was an instant smash. Epstein was so thrilled that he bought her a diamond bracelet from Boodle and Dunthorne, the Liverpool jewellers, and told the Press: ‘Cilla is going to be the next Judy Garland. I haven’t made her a star — the material was already woven.’

But Cilla the star never lost touch with her other personality, Priscilla the good and dutiful Catholic. Part of her remained a ‘girl-next-door’ who wouldn’t take drugs or sleep around, and the male bands on Epstein’s roster always respected that.

When she embarked in 1964 on her first UK tour, with Billy J. Kramer, Gene Pitney, the Swinging Blue Jeans and the Remo Four, the boys would scatter a carpet of flowers for her in the hotel corridors. Cilla scolded them: she knew they were stealing the displays from the lobby.

Her next hit went to No 1, too, and Cilla was thrilled when The Beatles returned from their American tour and Ringo reported that Elvis was a fan — You’re My World was in the King’s jukebox at Graceland. Cilla was not yet 21.

But she would never have another No 1. Pop careers were brief in the Sixties and, despite recording Alfie in 1965, another Bacharach song, her star had peaked.

After her singing success in the Sixties, and bringing up her family in the Seventies, she launched a new career in the 1980s as a TV presenter on the show Suprise Surprise 

In the 1990s, she was the first woman to host a gameshow on British TV with the launch of the popular Blind Date

Epstein tried to launch her in America, booking her for a week of cabaret at the Plaza in Manhattan. It was a flop, as were attempts to get Cilla a residency in Las Vegas.

Instead, she broke into British TV, hosting a midweek variety show with a theme tune written by McCartney that would become another signature tune for her, Step Inside Love. Her first guest was Tom Jones, and as they sang a duet, Cilla created a template for light entertainment TV that would fit many other pop stars-turned-presenters, from Lulu to Cliff.

During the Seventies she slipped from public view as she brought up the three sons, Robert, Ben and Jack, that she had with husband Bobby. In 1975, their daughter Ellen was born premature and lived for only two hours, a blow from which Cilla did not recover for many years.

But it was an appearance on Terry Wogan’s BBC1 teatime chat-show that rekindled national affection for her and led to a major TV comeback, as she reunited families and played good-natured pranks on Surprise Surprise.

She loved the format, relishing the unscripted upsets that could occur on live TV — in one notorious incident, when a young man surprised his long-term girlfriend by going down on one knee and proposing in the studio, the woman stunned the audience by turning him down and dumping him.

Cilla leaves Buckingham Palace in 1997 after collecting her OBE from the Queen.  Last year, a three-part ITV drama about the singer’s young life — simply called Cilla and starring Sheridan Smith — earned Smith a Bafta nomination

Cilla turned the moment into TV gold by turning to the camera and mouthing: ‘Surprise Surprise!’ The show ran for 17 years and, revived in 2012 with Holly Willoughby as presenter, would be Cilla’s TV swansong: as a ‘surprise’, she popped up to sing the theme song.

But it was another Eighties show that really cemented Cilla’s TV career. Blind Date made the most of her new persona, now that the girl-next-door had grown up to be a young-at-heart mum. As extrovert boys and girls picked partners from behind a screen by asking cheeky questions, Cilla kept the proceedings clean. This was the first gameshow to be hosted by a woman on British TV, and it confirmed her as a national treasure.

For a decade from Blind Date’s launch in 1985, Cilla Black was the biggest name on telly. Her catchphrases were imitated everywhere: ‘Worra lorra lorra fun!’ ‘Wosyer name and where’dyer come from?’ and ‘It’s our Graham!’

But when husband Bobby was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer in the mid-Nineties, the stuffing was knocked out of Cilla. Blind Date limped on, but her sparkle was gone.

Last year, a three-part ITV drama about the singer’s young life — simply called Cilla and starring Sheridan Smith — earned Smith a Bafta nomination. But it also introduced a true star’s music to a new generation — and reminded us all what an important figure the girl from Scottie Road had been in the British pop revolution.

KIUKWELI NIMEUMIA SANA '' CILLA ..KWA HERI NA ASANTE ..MUNGU AKUPOKEE SALAMA NA TUTAKUKUMBUKA DAIMA'' NAKUMBUKA NILIPO KUWA KWENYE NYUMBA YAKE BARBADOS '' AND I WAS LIKE OH MY GOD '' IM HERE CILLA '' ALAFU NINA PICHA NILIZOPIGA NIKIWA AT HER HOUSE IN BARBADOS'' SO SO SAD'' I USE TO LOVE HER SHOW YANI NILIKUWA NA HAKIKISHA NIPO NYUMBANI ''AISEE'' #rip

TUMECHOTA NA KUMIMINA KUTOKA DM ILI MJIONEE''