‘We’re still friends with him and he gets in touch regularly,’ said John, who also lives in Blackburn. ‘He will definitely be in touch when he realizes what Susan is doing. That’s just the kind of guy he is.’ Indeed, David had been one of the first to call the family after their mother Bridget died two years earlier.
Susan’s appearance continued to change subtly, with every new brush of lipstick being excitedly reported by the press, not to mention her first outing in heels and a sleekly fashionable pashmina.
In many ways, Susan was going through what most women do in their teens: learning how to use make-up, finding out what suited her and what didn’t, experimenting with new hairdos and having fun. And why shouldn’t she? Susan’s life had been tough so far, but as the writer George Eliot once said, ‘It’s never too late to be what you might have been.’
It wasn’t long before the real experts in their fields were hauled in. Nicky Clarke, the celebrity hairdresser, had a consultation with Susan, and while his assessment of her was a little cruel, he could certainly see potential. ‘At the moment she looks a bit like a man in drag, but there’s a lot of potential there, and when I’m finished she is going to look really beautiful, ’ he said. ‘I’m going to soften her hair with low-lights, which will freshen the face up. She will look stunning.’ The duckling was turning into a swan.
It was only two weeks into the new series, but although Susan was clearly a hot favourite to win, there were plenty of cynics who felt sure that Cowell and co. had a few tricks up their sleeves, and the latest sensation to be pulled out of the bag was Hollie Steel, a ten-year-old child with a fine singing voice. She, too, had a story to tell, in her case a serious bout of pneumonia when she was four that nearly resulted in losing a lung when she was treated in The Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital.
‘She was in hospital for three months and there were moments when it was life and death - she was all skin and bones and doctors thought she might not recover,’ her mother Nina said. ‘Even when she stabilized, they told me they would have to remove a lung. I was in bits and at times thought she might not make it, or if she did, she wouldn’t be able to lead a normal life. Now she has this amazing voice that melts your heart - it’s a miracle she can sing at all.
‘They told us they would have to remove a lung and that if that was the case it would lead to curvature of the spine and muscles around the heart twisting as she grew, because there would be nothing supporting her side,’ Nina continued. ‘She had two major operations to save her lung and thankfully started responding to antibiotics. When she first started singing she had this powerful voice on her and I asked a specialist singing teacher to check her out in case it was dangerous after all that had happened to her. But luckily they said she was fine. I love to listen to them [Hollie and her brother Joshua] both sing; it makes me so proud.’
This was what Susan was up against, not just in terms of talent, but in how much human interest the stories could provide. But however much stories about brave youngsters battling illness might have filled the papers, there was nothing to compare to her. Susan’s story wasn’t only inspiring, it was moving: it gave hope to every person who felt they had lost out in life’s lottery and who hoped that one day their fortunes would change. Susan was proof it could be done.
In the background, however, ructions were beginning to emerge. Susan’s family, while delighted about her success, were becoming concerned about the pressure she was under, and were worried that she wouldn’t be able to cope. There was talk of taking her away to the United States to escape all the commotion, while her brother Gerry, perhaps unwisely, claimed she was now ‘too big’ for Britain’s Got Talent. ‘If Susan isn’t removed or eliminated there’s going to be a riot in the street,’ he told the Irish Sunday Mirror. ‘There is a public appetite for a single but no product for people to buy. BGT need to step in and sort this out. The silence coming from BGT is causing a frenzy. We are all getting sucked into it and it’s getting a bit much now.’
Then there was Susan’s mental state. ‘When I last spoke to Susan she sounded exhausted,’ Gerry continued. ‘I said, “How are you?” and she said, “Oh, Gerard, I’ve been here, there and everywhere.” She’s been up and down to London for meetings with Sony. I could tell she was shattered. I said to her, “Get off the phone and get to bed. You need to rest.” Susan is frustrated. She’s not thinking about big cars and Bentleys. All she wants to do is sing, but she’s not being allowed to do that. The pressure would be much less, and the whole thing much better, if there was a management team to look after her.’
What Gerard didn’t seem to take on board was that Susan’s silence was building up expectations even more. No one yet knew if this was a one-off or whether she would be able to carry it through, and while it was putting enormous pressure on Susan’s shoulders, it was also setting up a situation in which she would prosper if she pulled it off, though if she didn’t it would all come to nought - but that’s showbusiness. Ultimately, if she was to have the career she wanted, she would have to be able to cope with the downsides, too.
Gerry was also concerned about the huge press attention Susan was receiving. ‘I have stayed away from what used to be our family house because there are so many people camped out there,’ he said. ‘It’s been like a scene from the film Notting Hill every time she opens the front door. I know Susan thinks she’s staying in that house to her dying day, but someone needs to step in and do what’s right for her. Is there a management deal or not? I imagined Cowell would move forward on this. But she’s got too big for the show. I understand Cowell wants to protect his show, but they can’t have their cake and eat it. Everyone wants to know why Susan isn’t going to America and why there isn’t a CD in the shops. They want to keep her solely in their eyes as a contestant on Britain’s Got Talent. But the time for keeping her within the confines of Britain’s Got Talent has passed. This isn’t working.’
If Gerry was deliberately trying to rile Cowell, he couldn’t have done a better job, and this wasn’t an end to it. ‘We’ve got a star on our hands and the appetite for her first record is huge,’ Gerry continued. ‘From a business point of view they are not capitalizing on her success. Any established act would love to crack America, but Susan’s done it in eight days. So do we keep on going and take up these offers or - for the good of the show - do we ignore the fact everyone is baying for a product? They can’t just sit back and ignore this phenomenon just because she’s a contestant.’ In actual fact, the last thing they were doing was ignoring Susan, and Gerry’s comments weren’t helping matters at all.
It was certainly true that Susan was feeling the full glare of the media in a way that few people have to cope with, and that she had neither the experience nor the cynicism to deal with it. There was a permanent encampment of journalists and camera crews outside her front door, while her every move was monitored, analysed and examined under the media microscope. But the fact remained that so far Susan had appeared on Britain’s Got Talent only once, and that she had a far better chance of establishing a long-term career if she stayed with Simon Cowell, a man who knows the music business inside out. Susan knew that, too, and stuck with it, while expectation built ever higher and the entire world began to dream her dream.
Cowell himself was extremely unamused by Gerry’s suggestions, and understandably so. There had been unconfirmed reports that the Britain’s Got Talent team were worried about Susan’s makeover, believing that much of her appeal lay in the contrast between her appearance and her voice, and Gerry’s suggestions that she should leave the show prompted an outburst in reply.
‘Get yourself together, sweetheart, for the big one - the semi-final,’ Cowell advised. ‘Shut the door, choose the right song and come back as who you are, not who you want to be.’
It was blunt, certainly, but it was also probably the best advice on offer. But could Susan do it? Could she prove that there was more to her than one performance, however remarkable that had been?
Simon Cowell was in trouble again. Not with Gerry Boyle, although Gerry continued to let it be known that he thought his sister should be receiving different treatment, but with little Hollie Steel, the young girl being talked up as one of Susan’s main rivals. Simon had publicly poked fun at her tutu, and criticized her choice of number - something that was becoming a stock in trade - but Hollie wasn’t having any of it.
‘Simon is a bully,’ she declared. ‘He was very mean to me. He might have thought it was funny, but it’s lonely up there on that stage on your own. I’m only ten, and when he said those things about my tutu I felt like I wanted to cry. I had tears in my eyes, but I didn’t want him to see me cry like the bullies at school, so I thought of things that made me happy. I thought of being in the final of Britain’s Got Talent and winning it.’ And winning was what she fully intended to do: ‘I like Susan but I think I can win this,’ declared Hollie. ‘I think she is a good singer, but I think I could do better.’ With that there was more information about the bullying Hollie had endured at school, and how her parents had scrimped and saved to get her into a good school.
Simon wisely decided not to engage in a war of words with a ten-year-old child, but the banter - if that’s what it can be called - and the criticism and the detail about the BGT contestants’ difficult circumstances were what made the show. The wider audience was engaging not just with the performance on the television, but with the life and times of the contestants, and the more problems they’d had, the more likely the public were to empathize. No one loves the underdog as much as the British, and with each tear-strewn tale came a wave of sympathy and a rise in viewing figures. Cowell the master manipulator knew this as well as anyone, and he also knew that being criticized in the press by BGT performers made for very good publicity. Everyone was happy; they were all getting what they wanted now.
Cowell also knew that it made good copy when he had a go at the contestants, so poor Susan got another tongue lashing from him. By now the Obamas had invited her to sing at the White House, while The Simpsons wanted her to warble to them, prompting Simon to snarl that he was ‘fed up’ with all the attention she was getting.
‘She’s not a winner yet,’ he commented. ‘She’s got four weeks to prepare for the biggest night of her life and she’s got to sing better than she sang before. But it could all go horribly wrong for her because there are so many other distractions.’ He did, however, have the grace to add that he was embarrassed by the judges’ initial reaction to Susan: ‘We were all guilty on the panel of judging her before she sang, and we all got it utterly wrong,’ he admitted. ‘You watch it back and it’s embarrassing.’
Someone else who had got Susan wrong was Michael Barrymore. As the excitement continued to mount, footage emerged from an episode of Barrymore’s 1995 show, My Kind of People. Susan had been on it and sang to the great man; he in return totally failed to notice what was in front of him, made a few jokes at her expense - including trying to look up her skirt - and sent her off with a peck on the cheek. The footage had never been televised, and only emerged because Elizabeth MacLean had also been auditioning and was being filmed by her daughter, Julie Febers.
‘Susan was a few people in front of me,’ Elizabeth told the Mirror. ‘When she began to sing, I knew she had a great voice, but Michael Barrymore was taking the mickey out of her. This was mine and Susan’s second audition for My Kind of People. When I saw her on Britain’s Got Talent, I couldn’t believe it was the same Susan . . . I was gobsmacked and I had my hand up to my mouth.’
Barrymore’s loss was Simon Cowell’s gain. Not that Susan was too worried about that: she had gone into hiding again, after the war of words intensified between her brothers and Cowell. Gerard had already had his say; now it was John’s turn, and his view was much the same as his brother’s.
‘Just let her sing,’ he said. ‘We’re pleading with Simon Cowell to loosen the reins. The hype and celebrity don’t mean anything to Susan - she just wants to sing. It is all she has ever wanted to do. Finally she has the chance to show the whole world her amazing talent, but she isn’t being allowed to. The whole world is crying out to hear Susan sing again - they want a product, be it an album or a single - but they want it now. We are more and more worried about her health. She is not used to all this and when I speak to her she sounds exhausted. When Susan signed a contract tying her to Britain’s Got Talent before her audition, no one could have predicted what a phenomenon she would become. The normal rules don’t apply any more - and I think Simon Cowell knows it, too. This is a unique situation and needs a unique solution.’
Both brothers clearly had their sister’s wellbeing at heart, and it must have been extremely frustrating for Susan not to be able to show the world what she could do. But a public spat between her family and her mentor was most certainly not going to do her any favours.
It didn’t help that Piers Morgan had now stepped into the row, appearing to play down the depth of Susan’s talent at a press conference in California. The worry was that Susan would become too big for her boots, but what no one seemed to realize was that, far from becoming big-headed, she was finding it increasingly difficult to cope. While her brothers might have been able to trade blows with Cowell and Morgan, Susan was not. What she needed was for all of them to shield and protect her, not start behaving like stags clashing antlers. None of this was in her best interests and it wasn’t surprising that she felt increasingly stressed.
At least Ant and Dec were being supportive, although even they expressed doubts about Susan’s changing appearance. ‘I don’t know about her makeover - she wants to look and feel good and that’s her prerogative,’ said Dec. ‘But she doesn’t have to do it ’cos the whole world fell in love with Susan as she was. I can’t wait to see her again. I can’t wait to see how she is feeling and to see what more she can do. We have only heard the one song from her and I want to hear more.’
‘We knew there were some crackers in the auditions, ’ added Ant. ‘Susan is the favourite, but as the weeks go on you can see there’s more talent out there. It is not a one-horse race.’
What the other talent didn’t have, however, was Susan’s international appeal. Over in the States, where Piers and Simon were doing their bit, fascination for Susan continued to grow. Ryan Seacrest, the host of American Idol - another of Simon’s many projects - revealed that a follower on Twitter had asked when Susan would be a guest on the show, which he called a ‘genius idea’. The chances of it happening right then, of course, were pretty low given that Simon wanted Susan to concentrate on Britain’s Got Talent, but it was an indication of the level of interest in America - interest that would only grow.
All this interest provoked a rash of stories suggesting that Susan was on the verge of quitting Britain’s Got Talent. In actual fact nothing could have been further from the truth. The show had given her the most fantastic opportunity, and she wasn’t going to blow it now, even if she did have to wait weeks before she could sing again. People might have made comments about Susan’s mental ability, but she was canny enough to know that to walk away at this stage would have been madness. And the fact that this wasn’t the first time she had sought a big break into television meant that she knew how rare these opportunities were. She wasn’t going to throw it away.
Soon problems of a different nature reared their head when it turned out that some of the other acts were thinking of walking on the grounds that Susan winning seemed to be a foregone conclusion. The saxophone player Julian Smith even came out and said as much: ‘I don’t think I can compete with Susan,’ he complained. ‘I feel no one else has a chance. She’s captured the world’s imagination.’ Other acts were said to feel the same way, and it was certainly true that none of the other acts had found a way into the public’s hearts in quite the same way, but that didn’t actually mean Susan was guaranteed to win.
Again the world piled in with their opinions. Piers wrote on his blog, ‘I think Holli
e can beat Susan. And so can Shaheen from last week. So can a few other acts you haven’t seen yet.’ The intention was clear: to show the world that there was everything left for everyone to play for, not that that helped Susan. Even her great supporter Demi Moore voiced concern: ‘Just seen Hollie,’ she tweeted. ‘Wow, the talent keeps on coming. More competition for Susan.’ On a more positive note, however, it was reported that Catherine Zeta-Jones was interested in playing Susan in a film of her life. Hollywood had certainly lost none of its fascination with what was going on across the pond.
As tempers frayed, expectations soared and controversy mounted, Susan inadvertently caused another row by seeming to imply that her appearance on the show hadn’t been the extraordinary chance everyone had thought, but was a result of the show being fixed. She was asked on an American television channel, ‘Did the show find you or did you find the show,’ to which Susan replied, ‘No, the show found me.’ This sparked a furore on the internet, with claims that Britain’s Got Talent ’s producers knew exactly what they were doing when they picked out this wee Scottish lady. After all, she had auditioned for Barrymore! The claims were hotly disputed by the show’s producers: ‘How exactly would we find Susan?’ demanded one member of the production staff. ‘She’s not exactly someone who sticks out from the crowd. For years she has been looking after her mum and living an ordinary life. In no way did the producers hand pick her for the show.’
Indeed, it appeared that in reality what Susan meant was that she had been trying to find somewhere to show off her talent and, having seen Paul Potts on Britain’s Got Talent the previous year, decided that this was the place to do it. To date there have certainly been no serious allegations that she was hand picked in advance, but at the time it added to the rumours and clamour surrounding the show. Not that anyone involved could really have minded - it was becoming one of the most talked-about shows of the decade.
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