Cilla Black on “Juke Box Jury”

The first time I appeared on Juke Box Jury, I wasn’t on the panel. I was in the “Hot Seat” – that famous chair hidden from the panel behind the screen. The jury were discussing my first record, Love Of The Loved.

I had been smuggled into the studio after the programme started so the panel guests wouldn’t know I was there. My heart sank when Jess Conrad decided he didn’t like Love Of The Loved.

After the programme, I was invited to meet the panel and the producer for a drink, but I lost my way in all those corridors. I asked a BBC technician where everyone had gone ‘”You want the hospitality room,” he told me, and started leading me to it.

“Here we are,” he said, opening the door of a little room where a crowd of people were tucking into refreshments. I found myself standing next to – yes. Jess Conrad!  He shook hands with me and started to apologise for the luke-warm comments he’d made on the programme about Love Of The Loved.

I assured him that if everyone just said kind things about records on Juke Box Jury, the programme would be very dull.

We parted the best of friends as I passed around the “hospitality room” being introduced to Pete Murray, David Jacobs and everybody else.

What I didn’t realise was that a couple of weeks later, I’d find myself in the same position as Jess Conrad. When I made my first panel appearance on JBJ I hit out against a new recording which Heinz had just made – and he was in the “Hot Seat” that evening!

Afterwards, I explained, “Heinz, I think you’re fab, but I just didn’t like your record.” He was great about it and we had a long chat together.

My most thrilling JBJ moment was when Neville Workman, the producer, and Isobelle, his secretary, introduced me to Peter Sellers. We sat and talked for ages.

Peter told me he’d once lived on Merseyside and that he’d been a drummer in a dance band in Liverpool. At first, I thought he was kidding. But when he began to tell me where he’d stayed and where he’d played, I knew he wasn’t.

I turned to Brian Epstein, who’d just arrived at the studio: “If only you’d been running NEMS Enterprises a bit earlier,” I said, “you could have signed up Peter Sellers as one of the first Merseybeat drummers.”

I met Peter Sellers in January when I was doing my third Juke Box Jury. It was filmed in the afternoon so that Dora Bryan could get back to the West End in time for her Six Of One revue, and I could rush off to the Finsbury Park Astoria and do two performances in The Beatles Christmas Show.  I was able to watch myself on the telly in The Beatles‘ dressing room just before the first house.

Neither of us realised it at the time, but Dora and I were to meet again later the same night at a party we’d both been invited to by Nancy Spain. It was a housewarming at a new place Nancy had bought (fab place too!) in Clapham. Alan Freeman was there, doing an impression of Russ Conway at the piano.

About two in the morning, both Dora and I must have felt hungry at the same moment. We both headed for the kitchen and finished up chatting about everything from The Beatles to Brighton (she lives there) over some fab chicken sandwiches.

Although I enjoy everything I do, I really look forward to being booked for JBJ. David Jacobs makes the perfect chairman. I just couldn’t imagine anyone else doing it.

One thing bothers me, and that is the American discs. The American panellists have already heard the Stateside version of a song, so when a British one comes along, they automatically compare them. Phil Spector preferred Dionne Warwick‘s version of Anyone Who Had A Heart to mine, but it was a fab feeling when all those lights went on saying HIT. HIT. HIT. HIT.

I’m glad they were right.

Another thing that sometimes worries me about JBJ from the recording artiste’s point of view – in some cases, I don’t believe the panel can make a fair judgment on a record they’ve only heard that once, while the programme is actually on the air.

I usually like to hear a new disc four or five times before I’m really “with it “. Unless the tune is very simple and the arrangement quite straightforward I don’t think it is possible to give a final “hit” or “miss” forecast on a record when you’ve only listened to it once.

On the other hand, of course, it would be a bad thing if the panel heard the records in advance and knew what was coming. In that case their comments wouldn’t be so spontaneous – and the whole idea of Juke Box Jury would be lost.

First published in Fabulous, 21 March 1964.