Her father did his Easter duty and received Communion once a year to avoid going to hell, while her mother was exceptionally devout. No wonder that Cilla Black’s memories of growing up in the heart of a Catholic working-class area of Liverpool were so vivid.The singer and TV presenter who died suddenly last Saturday, wrote about her childhood on the city’s Scotland (or “Scottie”) Road in her 2003 memoir, What’s It All About?There were perils around every corner: she learned to run fast to avoid a beating from “Proddie” youngsters, at a time when Liverpool was as sectarian as Belfast. She feared eternal damnation when she momentarily forgot it was Friday and consumed an orange smeared with an Oxo cube (a children’s favourite treat at the time
06 August 2015, The Tablet
Cilla’s style priest
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