Even Gordon Brown, the prime minister and a fellow Scot, found the need to comment on GMTV, ‘I hope Susan Boyle is OK, because she is a really, really nice person.’
This did, at least, allow the more negative element of the public to see that those public spats were not Susan behaving like a diva, but a cry for help. Intensive debate raged about the morality of taking a fragile woman out of a close-knit community and exposing her to the glare of the worldwide media.
The question about the Britain’s Got Talent tour had still not been resolved, and so Simon Cowell stepped in, saying, ‘She won’t be doing anything until she feels better.’ He must have been worried, too, in case the situation rebounded badly on him.
Irene Carter, the mother of one of the members of the dance troupe Sugar Free, had seen what was happening close up.
‘Susan was acting very strange all week,’ she told the Daily Express. ‘One time, staff working on the show backstage asked if she was OK and she said she was talking to her friend. She then introduced everyone in the room to this “friend”, who wasn’t actually there. Another time she came up to my daughter Emma in the hotel and asked to borrow her mobile phone. She left this really bizarre message, which went on for several minutes. When she got off the phone she said she had been talking to her cat back at home.’
This was the last thing the programme makers needed: Susan’s problems were beginning to look much worse than anyone had realized. The breast-beating in the press about whether she had been used as a pawn in a high-stakes commercial game continued, with fingers pointing at the amount of money various people stood to make out of this vulnerable woman.
Matters reached such a pitch that Talkback Thames, the company behind the programme, was forced to comment. ‘It is a talent show at the end of the day, and people are auditioning on their talent merits,’ said a spokeswoman. ‘There is no formal psychological testing at the beginning of the show. Compared with something like Big Brother, where you are looking at people going into a house for three months, the people on Britain’s Got Talent have three or four performances maximum and spend only seven to ten days in a hotel for the semi-finals and final. It is a very different scenario. But because of the level of media attention and the speed with which this has become a global phenomenon, we will be reviewing all of our policies in relation to psychological assessment.’
At least Susan was receiving proper treatment now. There had been reports that she had been sectioned, but that was not the case. She attended The Priory voluntarily by ambulance with, at her doctor’s request, a police escort. And she was beginning to calm down. Her brother Gerry spoke to her. ‘She’s at The Priory, talking to people there about how she feels and where she goes from here,’ he told the Guardian. ‘She sounded a bit happier, she sounded a bit more like herself, but certainly a bit more rested. She’s been on a tremendous roller-coaster. There’s been an enormous amount of media speculation and intense activity. She’s not used to that. She’s coming to terms with that, now that she’s no longer an anonymous face. I think what led up to it was the build-up to the show, and just psyching herself up for that, and then wondering after the show, “Where do I go now?”’
It was a question that still loomed large as matters remained in limbo. Susan recovered quite quickly, and with hindsight it’s apparent that it wasn’t a particularly serious episode. But at the time, no one knew how long she would be ill and what she would be able to manage in the immediate future. There was also the matter of the much-discussed album. Far from rushing something out in the immediate wake of the show, that would have to be more carefully paced.
The judges were trying to make the best of it. Both Piers and Amanda went on the record as saying that it was probably for the best that Susan didn’t win, because the pressure on her would have been so great that her health might have suffered. In fact, if she had won, it would have provided her with the validation she craved, but there was no use brooding about that now.
Another element that had been played down by all concerned for fairly obvious reasons is that on the night of the final, Susan had to put up with something else she hadn’t experienced before: booing.
Piers apologized to her about it afterwards, and it was only a very small element of a large crowd, but to someone like Susan it must have been devastating.
To have had victory snatched away, then to hear the public, who had seemed to adore her, turning against her, must have totally undermined Susan’s confidence. She had been treated cruelly, if not by the show itself, then by some members of the audience. Susan had had to put up with cruelty all her life, but this time it must have been particularly hard to bear.
After a day or so, matters took a turn for the better. It seemed that what Susan had suffered was an anxiety attack - extremely unpleasant and worrying at the time, but not, ultimately, serious. In addition, Susan’s public was not deserting her. The president of the United States, Barack Obama, was said to want her to sing at celebrations for American Independence Day, and Susan was starting to fight back. ‘I’m tired and I’m a wee bit homesick,’ she was reported to have told her family. ‘But I really hope I can still live the dream.’
Susan’s brother Gerry, who was keeping a very close eye on events, told the Daily Record that Susan was fundamentally just homesick and missing Pebbles. And that the anxiety attack she’d experienced was just the fear that coming second would destroy her nascent career.
‘She was sort of, “Where’s it all going and what happens now?” Great things are made of the Royal Variety and plans for her career are still to be confirmed, but I asked her, “Seven weeks ago, if someone had told you that almost everyone in the world would know who you are, and you had a budding record contract and would never want for anything again, how would you have felt?” I told her, “This is not the end of your career - it’s the start.” This show has just been a launch pad. The world is waiting for Susan to release a record. I wonder how many established acts would love to have the opportunities she will have.’ Gerry was spot on, and that was exactly what his sister needed to hear.
Any latent hostility to Susan that had built up in the week before the final had all but disappeared by now, and it was accepted that the reason she didn’t respond normally to events, including the extraordinary circumstances she found herself in, was because she couldn’t. Set against that was the fact that she’d been given the chance of a lifetime. Although her family was concerned about her, they were delighted that their sibling was going to have a chance to shine, indeed, although this was not to be the last nervous episode Susan experienced, she was making progress fast.
The Britain’s Got Talent tour was about to kick off less than two weeks after the final, and was getting closer every day. Already, it was almost entirely sold out; indeed a further seven dates had been added due to popular demand. There was no doubt about why: the public wanted to see Susan. Whether she’d won or not, she was still the biggest draw. But no one had any idea whether or not she’d be strong enough to take part in the tour.
The whole thing was turning into a nightmare for the tour organizers, although everyone was adamant that Susan’s health was paramount. Gerry pointed out that the best cure for Susan was for her to see that she was in as much demand as ever. It was, after all, fear that her career would be taken away from her before it had even begun that had put her in this state.
Amanda was keen to point out that Susan was in The Priory because she was ‘knackered’ rather than suffering from any underlying health issues, and that she would soon be fit again. As for Susan, well, she wasn’t saying anything publicly. She just wanted to get well again.
Although Susan was temporarily off the scene, the circus surrounding her showed no sign of slowing down, and more and more opportunities for her to perform kept arising. Susan’s brother John revealed that Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, no less, had been in touch, although his sister’s health meant that nothing more could be done about it yet.
Another offer of support
came from an unexpected quarter - Elaine Paige. Elaine was the woman Susan had said she wanted to emulate, and she too had become famous almost overnight, after she starred in Evita. She quite clearly felt genuine concern for Susan.
‘I really want to meet her as soon as I can,’ she told the Daily Express. ‘I hope I might be able to visit Susan when she is feeling up to it as I have so much advice I want to give her. I want to tell her to stay away from everything for a while and everyone connected with that show. She really needs to go home, get her head down and keep quiet. That is the only way she is going to get herself sorted out. I feel I have some very useful things to say to her. I have plenty of advice that I could give her based on my own experience. It was difficult enough for me when I starred in Evita in 1978, but this lady is from West Lothian and the media hype these days is much worse than it was back then. These days people who become famous face a total onslaught and she has had a hundred times more of it than I did because of YouTube and globalization. It would be difficult for anyone to deal with.’
But the fact remained Susan didn’t want to have nothing to do with anyone on the show. Britain’s Got Talent had given her the opportunity of a lifetime, and what she wanted more than anything was to get back out there. The offers were coming in thick and fast, and she wanted to be able to accept at least some of them and get back out on the road. After all, Barack Obama and Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber were not names to be sniffed at.
In the end, Susan’s stay in The Priory lasted only a few days. There was yet more frenzied speculation about how she was being treated - one minute it was reported that her cat Pebbles would be brought in to surprise her, the next it was said that The Priory wouldn’t allow Pebbles to visit because it was against the rules. Whatever the rumours, Susan left looking and feeling considerably better. This would not be the end of her troubles, but this particular episode was over with.
After she left the Priory, Susan did the best possible thing: she flew back to Scotland, where she was reunited with Pebbles, her family and friends. It had been a tumultuous time, and Susan had paid a heavy price for establishing herself. She might have been having problems, but she was turning into a star, and that was what she really wanted.
Given Susan’s background and personal issues, it seems remarkable that matters didn’t turn out considerably worse. But Susan was far more resilient than she was being given credit for, and whatever issues she might have had, she knew an opportunity when she saw one. Her life had changed beyond all recognition, and while there might have been a downside, there was a seriously big upside to the life that lay ahead. Susan Boyle had been tried and tested, and now she was on her way.
The Special Child
Britain, 1961. The decade that was to change the world was getting underway, and as the 1960s progressed, all the old certainties were torn down, rocking the establishment and ripping apart and rebuilding the foundations of society. It was the decade that would usher in Swinging London, riots in Paris, flower power and the summer of love; and it would produce revolutionary new musical talents, such as The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Cream, the Velvet Underground, the New Faces and many more.
Above all, though, it offered opportunity. Britain’s rigid class system came tumbling down, and for the first time ever it became fashionable to be working class. Luminaries of the era included working-class Londoners Michael Caine, Roger Moore, Terence Stamp, Twiggy and David Bailey. All of them came from humble backgrounds, and all of them became globally famous icons of the decade they came to represent.
Far away from London, in the small Scottish mining village of Blackburn, this revolution was passing by almost unnoticed. There, life went on much as it had done for decades, with hard work and bringing up your family as priorities. Blackburn was a small, traditional community, a world away from the bright lights and big city that its most famous daughter was one day going to experience: life could be hard, but you didn’t complain, you got on with it.
That, then, was the background against which Susan was brought up. It was to be many years before she, too, would prosper in the new modern Britain, and by the time she did so, Britain would have gone through yet another revolution, the digital revolution. It was this digital revolution - and the birth of the internet and websites such as YouTube - that were to play a huge and pivotal role in her success. To Susan, who at the time she was discovered did not own a computer, this whole phenomenon was new. It wouldn’t be long before she adapted, though.
Back in 1961, the Boyles were already a large family when it was announced that another surprise addition was on the way. Indeed, the Boyle family, first generation immigrants from County Donegal in Ireland, was almost complete. Patrick, a miner who went on to become a store man at the British Leyland factory in Bathgate, and who was also a World War II veteran, to say nothing of being an amateur singer in his spare time, and his wife Bridget, a shorthand typist, were getting ready for the birth of their tenth child.
On 1 April 1961, Susan Magdalane Boyle arrived, the youngest of four brothers and six sisters. A surprise child, she was the youngest by six years. Bridget was forty-seven by now, and unfortunately there were problems during the birth. The baby was briefly deprived of oxygen during labour, and this led to problems that would affect the child - Susan - throughout her life.
Susan knew from the word go what had happened to her, and she was also aware, at the beginning at least, that not a great deal was expected of her.
‘When I was a baby they didn’t really give me much scope because they told my parents not to expect too much of me and just play things by ear because I had a slight disability,’ she told the Sunday Express. Despite this, though, Susan was a much-loved child and grew up the apple of her parents’, and particularly her mother’s, eye.
At home, life was happy. The family was packed into the house where Susan lives to this day, which became a place full of children shrieking and hollering, rough and tumbling. At home, Susan wasn’t treated any differently from anyone else, and the shyness that crippled her out of doors was nowhere to be seen.
‘I was a cheeky little girl at home,’ Susan told the Sunday Times. ‘You had to fight your corner in a family the size of ours.’ But outside it was a different matter. Susan’s learning difficulties set her apart from the other children, and, as so often happens in cases like this, she was bullied. It did not make for an easy life.
‘I was born with a disability and that made me a target for bullies,’ she told the Sunday Mirror. ‘I was called names because of my fuzzy hair and because I struggled in class.
‘I told the teachers but, because it was more verbal than physical, I could never prove anything. But words often hurt more than cuts and bruises and the scars are still there. I still see the kids I went to school with, because we all live in the same area. They’re all grown up with children of their own. But look at me now - I’ve got the last laugh.’
She had indeed, but that didn’t make it any easier to deal with at the time. If anything, it made Susan’s problems worse, because, as she later related as an adult, it caused anger to build up inside her, an anger that had nowhere to go. Those occasions when she lashed out in public as an adult can be directly attributed to the problems she endured as a child, when there was no one to help or defend her. Once away from her family, who were extremely protective, Susan was forced to fend for herself. No one in authority helped her, if indeed they even realized what was going on. And so the anger kept growing, becoming increasingly internalized. No wonder it burst out in the end.
Susan’s talent for singing emerged early on. Her father, Patrick, had sung on wartime radio, so there was clearly an aptitude for singing in the family.
‘We’re all singers in our family, but I think we get our voices from him,’ Susan said. ‘I joke that my mum knew I had a good pair of lungs when I used to bawl as a baby. But it was really when I was about twelve and I started singing in school productions and in the choir. The teachers said I had a talen
t, but I was too young to know.’
Singing also started to provide a refuge from other elements of life, and it played an increasingly big role in her life when she moved into her teens.
Susan’s singing had begun several years earlier, before she started to take part in school productions, but although she was a member of some choirs, Susan tended to fade into the background when she sang with them. A child as shy as Susan was always going to find it difficult to step into the limelight, and so it proved to be.
‘I’ve sung since I was about nine,’ she told the American magazine TV Guide. ‘I’d do theatrical stuff and join choirs. I was picked for a solo once, but choirs for me were about hiding behind other people. They were about taking comfort in letting other people take the lead. I was quite shy back then. Hard to believe after everything that’s happened this year, I know! But I was. By the time you get to my age, you lose that shyness.’
Susan’s brother Gerard, who was six years her senior and the closest to her in age, said much the same. ‘My father sang in working men’s clubs and so did I,’ he told the Sunday Mirror. ‘We’re a very musical family and would all have a sing-song at weddings and family occasions. But Susan was so shy she’d take a back seat. It was only when she was about ten she sang at a family wedding and we realized she had a real talent. After that we couldn’t stop her.’ In private, that is. To the outside world Susan remained very much the bashful little girl.
It wasn’t just Susan who was singing, though; the whole family was at it. As Susan recalled to TV Guide, ‘Oh, we were quite a squad, all with different abilities, but all very musical,’ she said. ‘My brother Joe was a songwriter, too. My dad used to sing. My mother sung and played piano. I have two sisters that are very good singers. We were a wee bit like the Von Trapps! There were guitars sitting about the house, and a piano, and we’d all experiment with them. We loved the Beatles in the Sixties. I was just a wee lassie and we’d sit and watch Top of the Pops and wait for them and the Rolling Stones to come on. My dad hated that programme, so he used to turn it down. I used to turn it up just for devilment.’
Susan Boyle Page 9
