What a moving and emotional interview this was, and for once, Piers was somewhat gentle with his interviewee, Cilla Black.

His notorious terseness was thankfully largely absent, and rightly so because Cilla is a national treasure and I might’ve had to go down to the ITV studios and beat him up with his own shoes if he’d been mean to her.

Especially in light of her open and frank discussion with Piers about the death of her baby girl, Ellen, in 1975. Ellen was born prematurely we heard, and suffered from breathing and lung problems that led to her death just two hours after her birth.

Clearly Cilla’s grief over losing Ellen is still very raw, and she told Piers, “You blame yourself. Maybe if I didn’t work, maybe if I rested.

“But you know, I worked through all my other pregnancies, so why should this one be different? I don’t know, maybe it’s nature’s way.”

When talking about how she coped in the immediate aftermath of the loss of her daughter, Cilla said, “All I can really remember is I could hear in the next room two women talking about their babies and I had none. It was awful, awful.”

And of course, Cilla’s husband Bobby died ten years ago and she’s had to work hard not to buckle under the weight of her loss. Cilla talked about Bobby with both joy and sadness and it’s testament to her strength of will that she’s managed to haul herself out of the depths of her misery over his death to continue with her career.

At 66 years old, Cilla’s still working of course, though not as much as she once was, but that’s her choice. Her family are her first love but she was humbly grateful for all that her long-standing career had brought her.

If I didn’t already know it, this interview would’ve shown me how very ‘real’ Cilla is, and how unaffected she remains by her phenomenal success over the years. She’s warm and genuinely lovely person and that shone through in her interview with Piers.

If you missed it, you can catch it here on ITV’s Player.