Singer won awards for her work

As well as being a a singer and presenter, Cilla Black – who died overnight at the age of 72 – starred in a number of sitcoms.

She was even named Britain's Top Female Comedy Star by the Writers' Guild of Great Britain in 1975, based on her show Cilla's Comedy Six.

The show comprise half a dozen comedy pilots, all written by Ronnie Taylor, who'd previously written for TV variety shows that starred David Jason, Val Doonican and Jimmy Clitheroe as well as the series Thirty Minutes Worth with Harry Worth.

In the vignettes, still available on DVD, she portrayed a range of roles from an average 1970s housewife to a temp fending off the amorous advances of her latest boss, from a woman caring for her widowed father to a round-the-world yachtswoman.

The format was repeated in 1976 with Cilla's World of Comedy, another six half-hours for which she also sang the theme song. Easy in Your Company. These too were written by Taylor and also still available on DVD.

In these she played a footballer's wife, a woman hoping to escape her past in a new home, a biology teacher who's forced to take stock of her own life, and a bride-to-be making a torturous journey to the altar.

In 2013 Black was poised to return to her sitcom career, co-starring in Led Astray, alongside fellow Liverpudlian Paul O'Grady.

Although a pilot episode was recorded in October that year, the show was shelved because of O'Grady's fears that the long hours of filming would be bad for his health in the light of his heart problems.

At the time, Cilla told the Daily Mirror: 'I was looking forward to the sitcom but the week after we filmed the pilot he had heart problems again and we talked it over and just thought, it's not worth the long hours. He put the kibosh on it. We just agreed that it was too much of a risk - a week later he was in hospital.' He was treated for angina.

The show had been written by veteran duo Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, who also created Birds of A Feather.

A Spanish police spokeswoman confirmed today that Cilla had died at her home in Estepona on the Costa del Sol.

She said: 'We are still awaiting autopsy results but everything at this stage is pointing towards her death being the result of natural causes.'

Published: 2 Aug 2015