Susan Boyle

by Alice Montgomery

  We’ve already discussed the audience’s reaction to Susan’s audition, but what was not clear to many people was that Susan had to wait months before the rest of the world was let in on the big secret and that, despite feeling euphoric herself, she had no one to share those feelings with. Instead she returned home alone - she’d missed the last bus, so the production company paid for a taxi - where only Pebbles was waiting to keep her company. It was an oddly anticlimactic end to one of the biggest triumphs the world of showbusiness had ever seen.

  ‘I got home about midnight,’ she told the Daily Mail. ‘I was on such a high. It was like Celtic winning the cup. Anyway, I turned the key in the door and I walked in to silence. There was nobody to tell, so I gave my cat Pebbles a cuddle and fed her, went upstairs, hung my dress up and just went to bed. There was no big celebration. I just went home to bed. I do have the occasional glass of wine, but most of the time I’m teetotal. I prefer a half pint of lemonade.’

  It’s details like this that are part of Susan’s enduring appeal. Unlike almost everyone else in the world of showbusiness, she is touchingly honest, with no agenda or desire to airbrush out the more painful aspects of her life and past. This little Scottish lady had just caused a sensation, and yet there she was, pottering around her house, feeding the cat and behaving as if nothing had happened. She might not even have realized it herself, of course, but Susan Boyle had just changed her life.

  And so it proved five months later, when Susan’s triumph was unveiled to the world. Her first inclination was to pay tribute to Bridget: ‘I did it all for my late mum,’ she told the Daily Star. ‘I wanted to show her I could do something with my life. I was hoping she thought I did well. She was a woman in a million. She was unique and a lady. She taught me how to live a good life, how to behave in public and how to be a human being.’ And Bridget had brought up a talented and lovely daughter, too.

  Susan watched the programme with her brother John, who knew immediately that this was no ordinary talent show moment - this was something new, the likes of which had never been seen before. The world went mad.

  Susan however remained modest: ‘I thought there was room for improvement, particularly with the dress,’ she says in her usual down-to-earth fashion. ‘I love to belt out tunes in the shower because the sound is so good in the bathroom,’ she told the Sunday Mirror. ‘Music is like therapy to me. People accept me when I sing.’

  It was also the first time she came to regret her remark about never having been kissed. ‘Oh, I was just joking around,’ she said. ‘It was just banter and it has been blown out of all proportion. All I wanted to say is that I am single at the moment but I keep waiting. I am not on the hunt. I am happy as I am. It’s personal.’

  It should not be forgotten that while Susan might have learning difficulties, she also has her dignity, and she clearly didn’t appreciate the torrent of personal opinion and speculation about her love life that poured out in the wake of that remark.

  As has been mentioned earlier, Susan smartened up almost immediately after the audition - just like Paul Potts, who celebrated his triumph with some extensive dental work - and began to learn how to deal with a world that, for her, had changed overnight. There had never been a phenomenon like this before: even Paul Potts’ moment of triumph had taken weeks to build up rather than happening overnight. And it could so easily not have happened at all. Susan wasn’t exactly taking her life into her own hands when she sang, but it had come pretty close.

  ‘I expected people to be a wee bit cynical,’ she said. ‘But I decided to win them round. That is what you do. They didn’t know what to expect. Before Britain’s Got Talent, I had never had a proper chance. It’s as simple as that. You just have to keep going and take one step at a time and one day you will make it. You just don’t give up.

  ‘I knew what they were thinking. I saw people laughing and I knew they were laughing at me. But I thought, Well, they’ll soon shut up when they hear me sing. And they did.’

  Acres - no, forests - of newsprint were eaten up, examining the phenomenon of Susan Boyle, telling her story and attempting to analyse her appeal. There was the Cinderella aspect to it all, of course - although Cinderella was a young girl in her late teens, not a mature woman of forty-eight. Perhaps the real reason that Susan’s story connected with so many and made such a lasting impact is that she represents hope and the fact that it’s never too late to be what you might have been. After a genuinely difficult life, and a grief so debilitating it threatened to destroy her, Susan Boyle had triumphed over the nay sayers and doom mongers, the bullies and the school of thought that says if you’re to prosper in this world you must be young and beautiful. Susan had a dream and she had dared to pursue it. It’s all this that made such a formidable story, and that caused the whole world to take Susan to its heart.

  And so it began. ‘This is all very new to me. I went to bed one night and woke up in the morning to a group of about thirty children outside chanting my name,’ she told one interviewer as she, too, struggled to understand what had happened. ‘That’s when it all began. John had said the night before, “Now you’ve seen yourself on television, so just stay in, because I think there’s going to be a hell of a reaction.” And, of course, there was.’

  As for the makeover, in reality Susan had been pretty restrained. ‘For now, I’m happy the way I am, short and plump. I wouldn’t go in for Botox or anything like that,’ she said.

  Nor did she let it go to her head, and at the time of writing, she still hasn’t. Susan had waited too long for a chance like this not to realize what she had been given, and she also knew how hard it had been to get where she now was. Inspired by her mother, she had shown every vulnerable, middle-aged person in the world that there is a future out there, and if she could do it, so could they. There was also a downside, though: the fear that she could lose it all. She later said that it was this fear that prompted the anxiety attack that led her to The Priory. For the first time in her life, Susan had something to lose.

  For the time being, though, Susan took it one day at a time, chatting to reporters, inviting them into her home and talking about what an extraordinary thing it was that had happened to her. ‘It has been an incredible week, but I’m just taking baby steps, seeing where it goes,’ she told one. ‘Singing on CBS was amazing, and being given advice and encouragement by Patti LuPone was out of this world. She’s a brilliant singer. I’ve been very calm and relaxed. I’m taking it in my stride. I have no explanation for it, none at all. I’m just carrying on as normal. Tonight I’m staying in and having fish and chips.’

  Patti LuPone no less! Susan was in a different world now, a world where different rules applied. And although those who knew and loved her and understood her frailties were concerned that the immense pressure she was under might break her, that is not the way it turned out. Susan may have had her wobbles - and they weren’t over yet - but she had found an inner strength that would help her deal with everything the coming weeks and months would throw at her. She didn’t crumble under the massive pressure, she didn’t fall to pieces, and she did conquer Britain, as well as America, an achievement that’s still very rare for a British artist.

  Knowing what motivated Susan in the first place is to understand how she coped so much better than many people had forecast, and how she called upon her inner reserves to help her when the tension got too much and she came close to cracking. Susan had gone on Britain’s Got Talent for her mother, and having had such astonishing success, she wasn’t going to let her down now.

  Life on the Road

  In early June, Susan returned to Blackburn, where she received a hero’s welcome. The fact that she had come second in Britain’s Got Talent rather than first was clearly totally irrelevant. As newspaper columnists across the land were telling their readers, the dream hadn’t ended, it was just beginning. Susan was reunited with her family and Pebbles, before once more removing herself from the public eye in order to continue her recovery. She
wasn’t staying in her own home as she clearly didn’t feel up to the constant attention she received from the media and her fans.

  A record deal was now firmly on the cards, as soon as Susan felt ready. Simon Cowell was keen to sign her, but he kept telling Susan the choice was hers, for there was still a feeling in some quarters that the best thing for Susan would be to return to her old life. It didn’t seem to be what Susan wanted, of course, though what she would choose to do was still not totally clear.

  ‘The best cure for her is time with her cat and her family,’ he told the News of the World, and he was right, though behind the scenes Susan was raring to go. She had been assigned a doctor to care for her, Dr Sarah Lotzof, and the two of them had been seen out shopping together now that Susan was beginning to feel herself again. Describing her stay in The Priory as ‘a little holiday’, she continued, ‘I want to take on the world. I’ve got my sleeves up ready. From now on there’s nae crap.’

  Susan’s brother Gerry was also adamant that she was feeling much better. ‘I have spoken to Susan and she is very excited and positive about the future,’ he told the News of the World. ‘She told me, “Don’t worry. I’m having the time of my life.” She said she felt fantastic and couldn’t wait to come back home this weekend. She was giggling away and sounding more relaxed than she has in ages. That’s the thing with Susan. She suffers from these mood swings, so I hope that now she’s out of the clinic she’s OK.’

  There were still concerns, however, about whether Susan should take part in the Britain’s Got Talent tour. While she was making a strong recovery from her anxiety attack, there was no point in pretending she wasn’t still very fragile, and opinion was split as to whether she should be allowed to be part of the tour. While she was undoubtedly the biggest draw, it was made clear to Susan that she was under absolutely no obligation to take part if she didn’t feel up to it. There was no point in unearthing a massive new talent if you immediately drove it into the ground, and Susan, it was becoming apparent, was a performer who needed to be treated with care.

  The Britain’s Got Talent judges continued to be quizzed about Susan’s state of mind as some sectors of the public seemed to hold them responsible for what had happened to Susan. In fairness, although Simon Cowell might have had a particular obligation towards her - which he fulfilled - the other two at times seemed quite bemused by it all. Piers had appointed himself her public defender, but Amanda’s role in the whole circus was more nebulous. She did, however, point out that Susan’s breakdown might well have enhanced her career rather than anything else.

  ‘You have to remember I saw Susan just three times, and can only comment on what I saw,’ she told the Daily Mail. ‘She was definitely eccentric - funny, kooky even - but there was no sign of disturbing or weird behaviour. People keep saying she has mental health issues. I still don’t think she has. Yes, she struggled to cope, but anyone would. When she hit out, it was at journalists hassling her. I don’t think anyone could have handled the pressure she was under. I don’t think anyone - not even Piers, Simon or me - would have been able to hack it and we didn’t have the sheltered background she had. At the end of the day, she was admitted to The Priory for no other reason than to have a rest. She’ll be a bigger star, ironically, by coming second and by having to have a break afterwards.’

  So was Susan ready for the tour? Susan herself wanted to go: she had waited so long for an opportunity that she didn’t want to miss out on her big chance now that it had finally arrived. The support of Dr Lotzof was helping enormously, as soon she had 24-hour access to Susan, and so the stay in Scotland was a brief one. It wasn’t long before Susan was ready to return to London, this time with Pebbles in tow, in order to prepare for the tour.

  On the opening night, which took place at the Birmingham National Indoor Arena, Susan was a sensation. Before the concert began, she told fans, ‘I’m feeling much better now thank you and I’m really looking forward to performing.’ On stage, she was introduced by ITV2’s Britain’s Got More Talent presenter Stephen Mulhern as being ‘famous all over the world. She’s so famous even her cat Pebbles is famous’. Susan sang ‘I Dreamed A Dream’ and ‘Memory’ and the reception from the audience was ecstatic. If she had been in any doubt as to how much they loved her, she certainly wasn’t any more.

  It had been touch and go whether she’d make it on the tour. ‘I honestly don’t know if she’ll last the full tour,’ said Stephen Mulhern in an interview with The People. ‘There are more than twenty-five dates left to go and we don’t know if she’ll do all of them. She arrived at the venue on time, but none of us knew whether she was going to sing. It was a case of sheer nerves for her. I was standing there with no idea what was going to happen. So I was putting together a little routine just in case. I only knew she was going to go on about twenty minutes before she did. She brought the house down. But who knows what will happen on the rest of the tour?’

  There were still signs that not everything was quite right. At the second gig at the Sheffield Arena the fans loved her as much as ever, but it was noticeable that Susan was having problems. She stumbled over the lyrics of ‘Memory’ - a song she knew by heart - and while she didn’t appear to be suffering from stage fright, the stress seemed to be taking its toll again.

  Susan managed a third concert, but at that point doctors stepped in and told her she needed to rest. The tour had begun just a week after Susan left The Priory, and while she was clearly much better, she was still exhausted as she’d had very little time to rest. In the end, and much to her chagrin, Susan was forced to pull out of the Manchester concerts.

  Without underestimating what Susan was going through, all of this only added to the myth and mystery surrounding Susan. While she is as unlike a tempestuous diva as it’s possible to be, this was classic diva behaviour - leaving it till the last second before deciding if they’re going to show up, then cancelling their concerts at the last minute. And although the reasons for Susan’s behaviour were very different, the ‘will she, won’t she’ game not only continued to keep her in the headlines, but underlined her fragility, which in many ways was part of her appeal. Susan was, after all, the woman who had battled her demons to get to where she was today, and the fact that her battle had been such a public one was doing her no harm at all.

  Now the tour was reaching Susan’s native Scotland, the big question on everyone’s lips was, would she be able to perform on the Glasgow stage? The answer was an emphatic yes, not least because this is where Susan had sung the first audition, the one that had turned her into a star. The 9,000-strong audience gave her a standing ovation before she’d even sung a note, and this time she was word perfect. These were her people and she wasn’t going to let them down.

  The contrast in her appearance this time round was more marked than ever before. Sleek, coiffed and wearing a shimmery grey dress, when Susan made it on to the stage, she looked as if she was born to be there. Her evident delight in performing, and her happiness in front of the audience, towards whom she blew kisses, was there for all to see. The hip wiggling had gone, too, having been replaced by the kind of bow you’d expect from a veteran performer. It seemed hard to imagine that her first performance had gone global less than two months earlier, and that this amazing transformation had been achieved so quickly. A star had truly been born.

  As the tour progressed, Simon Cowell appeared on GMTV, ostensibly to talk about another of his vehicles, The X Factor. Inevitably, though, he wasn’t able to dodge the subject of his most famous protégé. He was quite open about the pressures on Susan, and even admitted that he would have been prepared for it had she decided not to enter the final of the show.

  ‘Everyone is writing about her, she’s in the spotlight and she found it difficult to cope with that, and at that point even I sat down with her and said, “Look, if this is getting too much for you, you don’t have to go into the final, no one is going to force you”,’ he said. ‘You do whatever you want, no one is going to force yo
u. And she looked me in the eye and said, “No, I want to win this competition, I want to give it a go,” and that was the decision we all made, and I thought that she wanted to do it, but it was only at the moment that she lost that it hits you and you go, “How is she going to cope with this?” And she found it very, very difficult. You can’t predict how things are going to escalate and how well that person can cope. What I don’t want to do at the beginning is go through a whole kind of psychological evaluation because I think, for me, that is almost discrimination.’

  As far as the concerts were concerned, and the missed gig in Manchester, Simon had been as much in the dark about her actions as anyone else. ‘I genuinely didn’t know what she was going to do,’ he said. Our feeling was that there are ten or twelve acts on the bill, but that everyone, like me, said, “We don’t want to force her into performing but hopefully you’ll enjoy the show” - it’s a tricky one.’

  Susan now had her own spokeswoman, and she explained that all that had been amiss in Manchester was that she needed a rest. There’s no doubt that ‘rest’ was a big issue: performers need stamina when they go on tour and Susan, for obvious reasons, had never done anything like it before. In order to capitalize on audience interest in the participants, the tour crams as many dates as possible into as short a space of time as possible - without wishing to sound unduly cynical, there was a good chance the ticket-buying public would have forgotten who most of the acts were had the organizers waited too long - which meant that people like Susan, who had only ever performed in a very modest way, had to adapt to the demands of a strenuous agenda. While Susan might have been tired, there was no sign at all of any form of mental collapse. For Susan, it had finally begun to sink in that her dream was coming true.