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Just when you thought things couldn’t get weirder, an old video of Cilla Black revealing her culinary guilty pleasure has got the whole internet talking.
And trust us – whatever you’re anticipating, the actual video is even more bizarre.
In the clip, the late Blind Date presenter is shown discussing her penchant for sprinkling Oxo cubes on an orange, even tucking into the delicacy on camera.
“I helped myself to an orange, and I helped myself to an Oxo cube,” Cilla said, recalling how she stumbled upon the concoction as a child.
“I guess I was so eager to eat the orange and the Oxo that it all blended into one. And I thought ‘oooh, I like this’.”
“Doesn’t that look fabulous?” Cilla then asked, brandishing an Oxo-drizzled slice of orange in – it has to be said – her perfectly-manicured hands, before helping herself to a taste there and then (with the skin still on, we should add).
Things then took an even weirder turn, as Cilla revealed how the treat led her to fear for her immortal soul, after accidentally enjoying some on a Friday.
Raised a Catholic, Cilla was not supposed to eat meat on Fridays, explaining that a neighbour told her she’d have to go “straight away to confession”, if she wanted to take Holy Communion that Sunday.
“Now, for a child, not yet a teenager – to put a kid through that was actually torture,” Cilla said. “But he asked the fatal question… ‘what did you do when you realised you were eating meat?’. And I lied! I lied! I said I stopped, I stopped eating the Oxo.
“To actually lie in the confessional box… because what’s what the point in confessing if you’re going to lie? So I went back, same priest, and it was just a simple 10 Hail Marys and twice around the block, and I was absolved.”
With its dramatic music, serious voiceover and even reconstruction of Cilla confessing as a child, you’d be forgiven for thinking the clip was a parody, but it actually came from the BBC series Eating With…, first airing in 2006.
Since being posted online on Friday night, the clip has been viewed more than 800,000 times, and even led to a segment on Monday’s Radio 1 Breakfast show, in which viewers were invited to try an Oxo-soaked satsuma themselves.