‘Mum broke the mould for women'

Cilla Black’s son, Robert Willis, chats to TV Times about discovering forgotten home movies in his mum’s attic

- HANNAH DAVIES

More than four years have passed since Cilla Black died suddenly, aged 72, at her home in Spain and there have been several TV tributes to the Blind Date and Surprise, Surprise presenter.

But this week we get to see how the much-loved star, born Priscilla Maria Veronica White, rewrote the rules of show business in a new ITV documentary, Cilla: The Lost Tapes. Narrated by Sheridan Smith, who played Cilla in the 2014 ITV drama, it features treasured home movies, discovered in 2017 when her three sons, Robert, Ben and Jack, were clearing out their childhood home.

Here, in an exclusive interview with TV Times, Cilla’s eldest son, Robert Willis, 50, chats to us about his mum’s life and legacy…

How did you discover the tapes?

It was in 2017 and we’d just sold The Grove, our family home in Denham, Buckinghamshire. My parents bought it in 1969 and never really threw anything away, so attempting the attic was daunting. There was everything in there, from my mum’s stage outfits for her [BBC1] Cilla shows to our childhood toys. Then, in these dog food crates, there were these tapes from the 1960s and 1970s and eventually I got round to digitising them. One film canister only had our family dogs on it, but then there was some incredible stuff from my mum’s past that we’d never seen.