Susan Boyle

by Alice Montgomery

  Susan was clearly determined to give the fans in her homeland a treat. After Glasgow, the tour moved on to Edinburgh, where Susan again provoked scenes of near hysteria and adulation when she appeared onstage. Meanwhile, it was confirmed that she had signed a record deal with Cowell, to be produced under his Syco label, and even then it was clear that it was going to be a massive bestseller.

  The tour promoters were taking no chances with Susan, treating her as gently as they could. While the other acts were ferried round the country in a tour bus, Susan got her own limo. She was also finally getting used to dealing with her fans. Although she frequently appeared tired as she moved between gigs, she always waved at the crowds, signed autographs when she could and greeted the people who had gathered to see her. The small public backlash that had begun just before the final seemed to have completely disappeared. Now that people knew she was battling on, Susan inspired only respect and affection - and a huge amount of it - wherever she went.

  Unfortunately, Susan was not able to perform at the next date in Cardiff. But while there were reports in the press that she had missed half the dates on the tour, the more realistic way of looking at it was that she had managed to appear in half of them. Life on the road is so utterly at odds with everything Susan was used to that it’s a minor miracle she had adapted as well as she had. Private limos, five-star hotels, screaming fans and euphoric audiences were not something Susan had ever experienced before, and while the same could be said of the other participants on the tour, they didn’t have Susan’s unique circumstances. All things considered, she was coping remarkably well.

  All the while, Simon Cowell was keeping a very close eye on the proceedings. For starters, he had a vested financial interest in Susan, who was now signed to his record label, and if she turned out to have a long-term career, he stood to benefit quite as much as she did. Then there was the moral aspect as well. If there was one person responsible for the huge change in Susan’s circumstances, it was Cowell, and he felt a duty of care towards her, too.

  In the wake of all the fuss about whether or not she would appear on stage during the tour, Cowell confessed that there had been some mistakes, particularly when it came to the hype built up around Susan and the fact that she didn’t actually win. It is difficult to see what else he could have done, however - the Boyle phenomenon was an entirely spontaneous global event and not a carefully manufactured Cowell extravaganza - but Susan could, perhaps, have been given more support.

  ‘During the final show, at the crucial point when the dance group Diversity won, I looked over at her face and thought, “Christ, she doesn’t know how to deal with not winning”,’ Cowell wrote in the Sunday Mirror. ‘It was a bad moment. Afterwards, I went over and gave her a hug and tried to reassure her. ‘Susan,’ I said, ‘my offer to record an album with you still stands.’ And we agreed that we would work together; that it wasn’t the end of the road for her. After that, I left the studio. I remember having a drink that night and trying to relax, but still feeling a bit strange. Something just didn’t feel right. And sure enough, it wasn’t.’ As her stay in The Priory proved.

  Cowell was perfectly honest about the issues Susan’s appearance had provoked: should people who might be a little fragile be allowed to appear on the show? Fame is a very strange beast and will often savage the person it initially befriends, but the point that Simon and Piers both made was that for all the difficulties Susan endured, the positives far outweighed the negatives. She had, after all, achieved her lifelong dream.

  Cowell discussed this with Susan’s family. ‘Last week, I met them in my London office and I asked them, “Tell me honestly, did we do right or did we do wrong?”’ he related. ‘What I meant was, was it right to allow Susan to carry on performing in the show once it became clear that she was finding it stressful? And they said, unanimously, that we did the right thing. They said that Susan has always wanted to sing and had sat at home for years, wishing that she had a chance. We had given her that opportunity.’

  Susan was now receiving the care she needed, though it was an issue that was unlikely to go away. In an episode totally unrelated to Susan, a contestant on The X Factor, a woman in her fifties, publicly claimed she was going to commit suicide after not getting through to the final, which gave rise to more fears about what happened when you put people unused to fame in the spotlight. A lot of the time, it turns out they just can’t cope.

  Whatever had happened in the past, Susan was doing well now. There was still some comment in the press to the effect that she shouldn’t be on the tour, but the fact was that Susan very much wanted to be there, and the only thing that was distressing her was when she wasn’t able to appear. She missed another show in Nottingham, but was due on stage at Wembley, where she was determined to perform.

  ‘Susan gets really upset because she thinks she’s letting her fans down,’ said her spokeswoman. ‘But she’s got to balance making her fans happy with looking after her health. She would have loved to have been at the shows, but she’s just really tired. She’s in London resting now, but she’s feeling really positive and can’t wait to get back on stage. She’s really excited about Sunday’s show - she loves singing . . . she lives for singing. If she were told she couldn’t perform at all because she had to take a break it would break her heart. And she still has a lot of support from her fans - she gets a standing ovation every time she sings and it means so much to her.’

  Susan duly sang at the two Wembley dates and remained adamant that she was loving every second and simply wanted the dream to go on. Now there was more than just the tour to worry about, though: now that she had signed a record deal with Cowell, there were tracks to pick and music to record. And so the process began, with Simon professing to love what they were turning out. ‘She sounds fantastic on record,’ he said, refusing to give any more specific details about what they would be releasing. ‘It’s not all going to be show tunes. It’s not an obvious record, but so far, it’s good. She’s got a really good recording voice and I’m going to take my time. She’s happy and I think she’s enjoying the process. Luckily, things have quietened down a bit.’

  They had indeed to a certain extent. The world seemed to have got over the difference in Susan’s appearance and voice - though if truth be told, she now bore no resemblance to the lady who’d first auditioned - but remained utterly fascinated by her strange and poignant story. Plans were afoot to run organized tours of Blackburn, although in truth there’s little that stands out there apart from Susan. The demand was there, though, especially from the United States, which remained transfixed by everything to do with Susan Boyle.

  The Americans were not alone. In June, the French-born, Glasgow-based artist Laetitia Guilbaud, caused uproar when she painted a portrait of Susan that made her look like something out of the Folies Bergère. In the portrait, Susan’s waist is cinched in by a corset, while a very low-cut top shows off a deep décolletage (something the real Susan would never wear, having always dressed extremely modestly). She is also smoking a cigar, while one gloved hand clutches a satin purse and another strokes the pearls at her neck. There is the tattoo of an ‘S’ on her thigh, while beside her sits an ice bucket filled with champagne.

  It was certainly a novel take on Susan. ‘For me, even though she is not the most attractive lady in the world, she has come into the spotlight recently with her beautiful voice and singing talent,’ Guilbaud explained. ‘I felt obliged to paint her in my style and give her a bit of “je ne sais quoi” and make her more sexy and appealing in a physical way to go with her voice and also wanted to reveal a wild side to her now that she is a celebrity.’

  The pictures were pretty innocuous, all told: no one had depicted Susan as a saucepot before, and there was certainly nothing gratuitous or cruel intended by it. But some of Susan’s fans, especially those who lived in the United States, were unhappy with the portrayal of their heroine. Susan appealed to a wide variety of people, but one particular section of society who l
iked her were the very religious, and they were incensed by Guilbaud’s portrait to the extent that they issued threats. An email campaign was begun, orchestrated by a fundamentalist Christian group based in Texas. A typical email read, ‘This work is a mean depiction of a precious child of God. The artist should be crucified.’ While another said, ‘Susan is an angel. She would never behave in this way. Guilbaud should look to God and pray there is no retribution.’

  Laetitia was extremely taken aback. ‘My artwork was never intended to insult or be hurtful,’ she said. ‘I am a fan of Susan. When I read the first few emails I was very scared. Some of them were threatening me. In one week I got thousands of blog hits and emails. About 200 were sick. They came from Texas.’ In the event, not everyone was so squeamish: the picture was displayed in Glasgow’s ArtDeCaf gallery and remains prominent on Laetitia’s website.

  All of these were examples of Susan’s astonishing reach, and as well as touching people’s hearts all over the globe, she showered people with her gold dust by association. Britain’s Got Talent judge Amanda’s career continued to go from strength to strength in the United States, which she cheerfully admitted was entirely due to the Susan Boyle effect. She was interviewed so many times about Boyle that American TV companies continued to use her on other projects. And heaven help anyone who made nasty remarks about Susan: when Sharon Osbourne spewed out something unpleasant about her, she was forced into a humiliating climb-down and apology soon after. The world didn’t want to hear this sort of nastiness. Susan was a fragile creature with a huge amount of talent and people felt highly protective of her, even if, in some cases, they took it a little far.

  Paul Potts continued to watch Susan’s progress with interest, too. Both artists were aware of the comparisons made between them, and it seemed to make good commercial sense for them to collaborate at some time. But even Potts blanched at the kind of attention Susan was receiving, which went well beyond anything he’d had to deal with. ‘She’s done really well and she’s coped with the sudden media attention,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how I would have coped.’ Potts said he was hoping to sing a duet with Susan at some point in the future, but said it was too early to think about that yet. ‘I wouldn’t want to add any more pressure than she has already,’ he explained. ‘It is obvious she is finding it tough and I hope that she will be left alone.’

  Susan didn’t appear to mind, though. She might have found the pressure tough, but the idea of having it all taken away from her was a lot tougher.

  Meanwhile, the revamp continued. In July Susan flew to the United States to appear on the Today Show, forcing Barack Obama to switch his TV health care address to the nation because it would have clashed with the interview. By now Susan looked even trimmer. Her haircut was slicker, her make-up more polished, and she appeared to have lost some weight, clad as she was in an elegant purple dress. The show’s host, Meredith Vieira, asked her if she’d had a makeover.

  ‘Just a slight one,’ said Susan, looking coy. ‘I brush up quite well.’

  Susan also spoke about the bullying she’d endured as a child. ‘It wasn’t easy for me as a little kid, no, because I got ridiculed in school,’ she said. ‘You always get that from your peers anyway. I’m the type of person that just couldn’t stand up for herself very well, but I got over it. I’m getting over it now.’

  And how did she find being so famous? Vieira asked. ‘I’m having a great time,’ said Susan firmly. ‘It’s been unbelievable. It’s indescribable. Anyone who has that kind of impact finds it hard to get their head around it. The impact [was] like a demolition ball . . . I’ve got to be honest here, through the guidance of a great team, and they are very good, I was able to see that in perspective and really turn that around a little. Being plucked from obscurity is like going on a long journey. You never know how it’s going to end. I don’t want it to end.’

  That should have been enough to silence the doubters, but it wasn’t. They felt that Susan would have been better off returning to obscurity in Blackburn, but it was plain that Susan disagreed. Increasingly these people acted as if they knew what was best for Susan, and some people continued to fulminate that she was unable to cope. All the while Susan was jetting back and forth across the Atlantic, looking more and more polished with each journey. What the doubters didn’t realize, of course, was that they were treating Susan in exactly the same way the rest of the world had always treated her - until she showed she had a talent. Susan had spent her entire adult life being told that others knew what was best for her, and this was the first time she was having any say herself. It was a turnaround she appeared to be relishing.

  At any rate, anyone who had the kind of clout that forced the President of the United States into rescheduling wasn’t going to go away in a hurry. As well as revealing the full extent of the impact Susan had made, that episode of the Today Show featured Elaine Paige, who Susan had so famously said she wanted to emulate. Susan was stunned when her idol came on, telling the audience she was ‘absolutely gobsmacked’. Then there was a specially filmed clip of Donny Osmond, pointing to a poster of himself and Marie in his Las Vegas show: Susan should come and see the show, he said, and possibly replace Marie.

  Not only was Susan’s newfound fame beginning to sink in, she was also beginning to see the financial rewards of all her hard work. Her home in Blackburn belonged to the council, and now she began to make plans to buy it. She was also learning how to use a mobile phone for the first time, although her brother Gerry asserted she hadn’t quite got the hang of texting. Susan now had a credit card, a PA, a body-guard (which she needed - those crowds could get boisterous) and most importantly of all, Simon Cowell’s secret mobile number, the one he almost never gives out.

  Cowell was taking his responsibilities seriously: there had been one near breakdown and he wasn’t taking any chances of it happening again. Meanwhile, Susan, who was about to start work on her album, was being housed in a spacious, minimalist flat in Kensington, a very upmarket area of London, where Pebbles was also holding court. Was she ever going to go back to Scotland? Well, yes, of course she was, but she was certainly experiencing a very different world to the one she was used to.

  Susan really hit the big time when she was asked to pose for the September cover of the US magazine Harper’s Bazaar. It was an incredibly prestigious gig as the magazine, an upmarket glossy, was associated with high-end sophistication and its covers are usually filled with extremely beautiful women. Susan was entering a different league. ‘It really made me feel like a Hollywood actress,’ she confided. ‘I had my hair done up.’ She certainly looked extremely glamorous, even more than she had previously.

  The only downside as far as Susan was concerned was the fear that everything would be whipped away again. Showbusiness is a notoriously fickle industry, and no one’s career is guaranteed, but at least she was in the right hands. ‘Susan absolutely loves the life she is leading now,’ her brother Gerry said in an interview with the Sunday Mirror. ‘But it has left her fearful of going back to how things were, living on her own and waiting for her singing dream to come true. She has asked me many times what happens if this all stops?’ There was no answer to that, although at least Susan would be a lot better off than she had been previously.

  Gerry also appreciated what Cowell was doing for his sister. ‘Simon called me to a meeting and was very determined to let me know, as her brother, that she will be managed delicately,’ he said. ‘I saw a different side to him. His TV persona is one thing. But he made it clear to me he has Susan’s best interests at heart. As a family we needed to hear that.’ He was certainly doing everything in his power to make her life as comfortable as it could be. But there was much more to come. Harper’s Bazaar was due out shortly - and there was a record launch to plan.

  Glamming Up

  When the Harper’s Bazaar featuring Susan appeared, it caused a sensation. Susan was looking better and better by now: there were clear signs of weight loss now, and the way she had been
styled made her appear positively soignée. She was dressed beautifully, too, in an array of designer outfits that it would have been inconceivable for her to have worn previously. In one shot she sports a sequinned Donna Karan top that, for the first time ever, showed a hint of cleavage. She was still demonstrably Susan, just a glossier version, and had managed the transformation without destroying the essence of what it was to be her.

  Susan was clearly loving every minute of her new-found fame. The photo session had taken place at the country house hotel Clivedon in Buckinghamshire, which had been the setting for another un-Susan-like episode decades earlier: the parties at the centre of the Profumo scandal. The pictures of Susan in her new glamorous incarnation capture her sitting at a piano in a long, black, Tadashi Shoji taffeta gown, while others show her relaxing in brightly coloured dresses and coats, a world away from her former rather drab garb. Most notable, however, is how happy and relaxed Susan looks in the pictures. The days when she appeared to be struggling with how much her life had changed seemed well and truly in the past.

  Susan had always considered it to be her destiny to be a singer, and now, at long last, she was being proved right. But having established her vocal talent, she had to look the part, and if that meant a wardrobe full of designer clothing, so be it. Susan might not be interested in her appearance, but she was well aware that others were, on top of which she had been rather dismayed by the early photographs that were taken of her. In the end she was only too happy to go along with the makeover, putting herself in the safe hands of this upmarket fashion magazine.

  So spectacular was her transformation that the woman behind it - Laura Brown, Harper’s special projects manager - was interviewed about it on NBC’s Today Show. ‘The idea behind the shoot was a very, very simple one,’ she said. ‘It was to take gorgeous, glamorous and sensitive portraits of her. This was her first magazine photo shoot, so you can’t do too much too soon.’ But what they had done was spectacular. Now you could see the pretty young woman that Susan once had been.