At CultBox, we are usually preoccupied with TV personalities who have flown on board the TARDIS or the Liberator, or who keep a Synth or a book of English magic for personal use.

But occasionally there are figures so mainstream, so ubiquitous, that they cut through narrow definitions of cult and seem to embody the medium of television itself. Cilla Black was such an entertainer.

Along with the likes of Mike Yarwood, Ronnie Barker or her good friend Frankie Howerd, Cilla was part of that generation of celebrities who gained stature and definition from the four-square frame of the box in the corner – back when we still called it the box in the corner.

These were people who became extended family: part of the same rhythm of family life as dreary Sunday afternoons or chatting into the house phone at the foot of the stairs. Cilla’s ‘lorra lorra’ was as much a staple of playground mimics as Frank Spencer’s ‘Ooh Betty!’ or Kenneth Williams’s strangulated vowels.

Such figures, of course, are never entirely uncontroversial. Talk to certain folk in Liverpool and they’ll say that Cilla became too much the Tory to remain uncomplicatedly the sweetheart of her proudly socialist birth town. But such is the way with the very British kind of fame that Cilla stood for: brickbats always accompany plaudits.

Looking back today, what’s more remarkable is that a working class woman was able to endure at the top of the TV industry for so long – and, for so many of those years with her husband and manager at her side, to do it on her terms.

In today’s multi-platform age, such entertainers become more scarce – all-rounders, like Cilla, who could be singer, presenter and surrogate auntie and mum.

When everything is on demand or pay-for-view, entertainers like this who stand at the heart of British family life may well seem like part of a bygone golden age. That’s why, in mourning Cilla today, it feels a little like a part of British culture has gone with her.

Ta-ra, chuck!