SHOW BUSINESS is a notoriously fickle industry, particularly the pop music genre. So fickle, in fact, that the term ‘one-hit wonder’ was coined to describe performers who only enjoyed one Top 40 hit single before fading into obscurity.

So to have succeeded not once in show business, but twice – first as a pop singer in the 1960s and then as a prime-time television host in the 1980s and 1990s – is a remarkable feat.

In Britain, only Sir Bruce Forsyth has enjoyed the same kind of longevity as Cilla Black, whose death was announced yesterday.

Although she was an unlikely music star, a good Catholic girl in an age of sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll, the public took Cilla to their hearts both as a singer and a presenter.

She once said that the producers of Blind Date had chosen her to front the show because she was ‘sexless’, but the truth was that only she could have made the format, with its inherent streak of cruelty, a success. Not because she was sexless, but because she was so nice.

With Cilla acting as chaperone the contestants would never be left embarrassed no matter how disastrous their blind date turned out to be.

Cilla was the showbiz star with the common touch. Although she lived for much of her life in the south, she never lost her Scouse accent and never turned her back on the ordinary folk who loved her.

The death of her beloved husband and manager, Bobby Willis, in 1999 was a huge blow but she took solace in the outpouring of love and sympathy it provoked.

Relentlessly upbeat and perky, her death aged 72 came as a shock because she always seemed so full of life and vitality.

One of Cilla’s famous catchphrases was her description of Graham Skidmore, the voice artist on Blind Date, as 'Our Graham'.

To her legion of fans, she will always be ‘Our’ Cilla.