Alan Boyd, LWT head of entertainment
A standup comic called Duncan Norvelle hosted a pilot episode of Blind Date for us. I thought of Cilla for it right away, but I knew she didn’t want to take on a second show. She just wanted to do Surprise Surprise. Then, one day, I said: “Oh, by the way, I have a show you’d be lovely for, though I know you’re not interested.” She replied: “Oh, I’ve seen something I’m interested in too – this Australian show called The Perfect Match.” I said: “Funnily enough, that’s just like the show I want you to do – except the one we’ve seen is The Dating Game from America.” So there it was. What a piece of luck.
She only wanted to do six episodes, though, and didn’t want to do Surprise Surprise as well. I said: “No, I’d like you to do both.” And, after some persuasion, she did. In the pilot, Duncan hadn’t been able to get the logistics, but Cilla was great at all the army-like manoeuvres – turn left here, look into that camera, introduce this now. She was in her element, a natural with the boys and the girls, hysterical from day one, and the public adored her. She wasn’t the big glamorous star, she was just normal. She was you.
“What’s the script,” she’d ask. “Who will I meet, what will I wear?” She had to know everything. Although the show was never rehearsed, she’d plot it every week. She was so professional and could cope with anything: whenever something naughty happened, she just lit up. The screen jammed a few times and once it actually hit her. Cilla would love it, have a giggle, but it was actually very serious – it had to be a surprise when the couple saw each other!
I was unsure about the way “our Graham” enunciated “It’s Blind Date!” at first, but our producer said: “No, Alan, come on – let’s not use the standard voice everyone else uses.” And then of course everybody copied our Graham for ever.
After a few years, younger producers wanted aggression, even fights during dates – but at first, our goal was to have a wedding every series. Cilla wanted one, too. She wanted to wear that famous green hat, the funny, furry number. And when we finally got one, it was in all the papers.
Blind Date ran for 19 years. Can you see yourself doing the same thing for 19 years? But Cilla was as good on day one as she was at the end, always on time, always the professional’s professional. Then she quit on air just before she turned 60. There’s no going back when you do that. I was surprised it wasn’t done in a meeting, but I think the moment had come and something just triggered her.
Cilla always used to say: “Boydy chose me because I wasn’t sexy.” But that’s not quite what I said. I said I chose Cilla because she’s not going to make the show sexy. I didn’t say it was because she was sexless.
John Birt, LWT’s director of programmes, was worried the show would be too sexy. Can you imagine anyone in TV feeling that way today? He wanted to delay it: ITV was in the middle of a review, and he thought it could harm the organisation’s future. Remember, this was the mid-80s and a dating show had never been done. I told him Noel Edmonds was going to do something similar on The Late, Late Breakfast Show and if you don’t go with it and we’re not first, our footprint’s not in the sand, everybody will say we’re copying them. But Noel never was. I was fibbing.
Laurie Holloway, theme tune composer
I was Alan Boyd’s lad, his go-to composer, having done Game for a Laugh and Beadle’s About. One day, he said we’ve got this new series, based on The Dating Game. Its theme had a whole tune with lyrics and everything.
So I wrote a proper song called We’re Going on a Blind Date, something like: “We’re going on a blind date / Make sure that you aren’t late / We’re going to be with Cilla / And that’s a lorra lorra thrilla.” I took it to Alan and he said: “Ugh, have you got anything else?” He hated the thought of a full song. So I said: “What about, ‘Blind date, blind date – da da da da da da!’ And he said, ‘That’s it!’”
It was just two notes, but they were so strong. It must be one of the most recognisable theme tunes ever, the kind of thing people would sing doing the washing up. One gentleman I met did a headbanging remix that was No 1 in the club charts. It was nine minutes long.
The presenter Henry Kelly once asked me: “How did you write Blind Date?” And I replied: “I wrote it at the traffic lights – and they were green!” He lives on that as a dinner joke.
