One Chance

by Paul Potts

  At twenty-five, I was the youngest person on Bristol City Council. I had a job, and the potential beginnings of a retail career. For the first time in a long while, I felt that my life was stable and that possibilities were ahead of me. But despite all of this, my dreams about wanting to sing would never quite go away.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Unexpected Opportunities

  I’LL NEVER FORGET the first time I felt a real buzz from an audience’s reaction to my singing.

  The moment came during my time at university. Because there had been few singing opportunities in Plymouth, most of my performing was done back in Bristol. I took part in an All Saints Players’ production of Grease, preceded by a first half of “Songs from the Shows,” and it was there that I got this incredible reaction.

  The song I’d chosen to sing was “Love Changes Everything” from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Aspects of Love. I had been listening to it on cassette, and on a whim I bought the sheet music. After two rehearsals with Chris Gammon, the producer for the show and the church’s organist, I decided to perform it.

  Having listened to my cassette repeatedly, it took me no time at all to sing the song without the lyrics. This allowed me to really “perform,” and was perhaps the first time I fell in love with performing. I had always enjoyed singing high notes, and the louder and longer the note was, the better! “Love Changes Everything” was perfect for that; it ends with a high B flat scored for eight beats. On the night of the performance I held it for twelve, and wanted to hold it longer.

  I was taken aback by the reaction I got. The response of those listening was overwhelming, and it was the first time I had ever felt the sensation of an audience “buzzing.” It was an incredible moment. I loved that feeling. It gave me a shiver down the spine—something I wanted to feel again and again.

  Back living in Bristol after university, I started singing in the chorus of Bristol Catholic Players. It was a challenge to find time for everything, what with my job and being a local councillor. I tried very hard to get principal parts in the productions but found myself held back by an unexpected reason: my teeth.

  During my time at university, one of my middle teeth had to be removed and the crown on another tooth got damaged. While my singing was said to be sufficiently good, the company considered my teeth to be too much of an issue for me to be given a romantic lead. Of course, I could have had reconstructive dental surgery, like any sensible person might. But I wasn’t just some ordinary person. When I encountered an obstacle, I always saw it as something to run away from. I knew that my teeth looked terrible; I would have been stupid not to notice it. But I saw no advantage to changing them.

  I’d spent hours and hours in a dental chair before, and that was when it was free of charge at the Bristol Dental Hospital. Now it would involve large financial costs, and I didn’t see any way of being able to afford it. I was also stubborn: the fact that I had been told to my face at an audition that there was no way I would be given a part because of the condition of my teeth angered me. Why should I be dismissed just because of my teeth? It felt unfair.

  Since I couldn’t get a leading role because of my teeth, I was usually an understudy and sang solos in the concerts we gave in different parts of Bristol. I’d given up on ever getting a romantic lead, a defeatism that on one occasion almost caught me out. I had arrived at Newmann Hall for the performance of Yeoman of the Guard, for which I was understudy for one of the minor parts. Understudies are often in a difficult position, as they never get to rehearse the scenes they have to do in case the lead suddenly becomes ill or unavailable. Because I had been told I would never get a main role, I saw no route of progression at all, and didn’t see the opportunity of actually doing this minor role as a stepping-stone. All of which meant that I hadn’t learned the part. On that night, the person I was understudying didn’t show up. I was told to put his costume on, and I was dreading it. With good reason: I sang unprepared, and my confidence was shattered as a result.

  Even so, I enjoyed my time in Bristol Catholic Players. Rehearsals were held in the Catholic school by Newmann Hall and conducted by Adrian Anglin, who also played a mean (and I mean mean!) Dick Deadeye in the company’s production of HMS Pinafore. I enjoyed Gilbert and Sullivan because the plays had humour as well as being musically challenging. I also have Bristol Catholic Players to thank for my love of walking, which started with their regular walks on public holidays. One memorable walk was in Gloucestershire on a Boxing Day. Climbing over a stile, I saw a huge puddle and Adrian, the walk leader, offered his hand to assist me. I thought I’d manage by myself, so I politely refused the help. I learned how foolish this was. They say pride comes before a fall, and here this became very true. I misplaced my footing and landed with my face in the mud! It was a lesson learned: sometimes you have to accept help, not struggle by yourself.

  “So come on, Paul, who are you going to come as?”

  “I thought I might come as an opera singer . . .”

  The Horn and Trumpet was a pub in the centre of Bristol next to the Hippodrome, and something of a favourite for the Tesco staff. A group of us played football on Sunday, and we’d go to the pub afterwards for a drink. Sunday night also happened to be karaoke night at the pub. I’d first done karaoke at a local fund-raising night for the Liberal Democrats. It was well received, and so I started singing at the karaoke nights at the Horn and Trumpet.

  I would usually sing songs by artists like Elton John and Boy-zone. My favourites, though, were songs high in pitch. My top-three karaoke songs were three of the most difficult: Queen’s “The Show Must Go On,” Foreigner’s “I Want to Know What Love Is,” and Air Supply’s “All Out of Love.” The Queen and Foreigner songs I loved simply because they were very high with top D’s. “All Out of Love” I liked for a different reason: not only did it go quite high, but the last note I sang was a very long one—over twenty seconds.

  One particular Sunday, the hosts announced they would have a competition in the style of a popular TV programme called Stars in Their Eyes. On the show, each contestant not only sang in the style of their idol, but dressed up to look like them as well. I was keen to take part in the competition; the question was, who should I come as? As chance would have it, I had just bought a music book that contained a few opera arias. It came complete with an orchestral backing track, and one of the pieces seemed perfect, if a bit of a gamble.

  “I’m going to come as Pavarotti,” I announced to my fellow footballers. “I thought I might have a go at singing ‘Nessun Dorma.’”

  “What? The one from the World Cup football?” My teammates were impressed, and they raised the stakes a little higher. “Wait until we tell everyone about this at Tesco tomorrow.”

  Sure enough, word quickly got round Tesco about my “Pavarotti in the Pub” appearance.

  “Don’t worry, Paul, we’ll be there.”

  “I’ve got tomatoes I was going to get rid of. Maybe I’ll bring those along.”

  It was quite a step away from my usual risk-averse self. When I announced that I was going to sing, I hadn’t even listened to the backing track from the book, never mind actually practised it. I spent the next few days listening to a performance by Pavarotti on the Three Tenors cassette tape I had, and then I started to practise. My Italian was terrible; I had sung some Latin in school choir, but I didn’t have the first idea about Italian. Thankfully, because the CD had graphics, the words would come up onscreen in the pub just like any other karaoke track.

  The evening of the competition came around quickly. To say I felt uneasy would be an understatement. Not only was there the singing, but I had to come up with a costume. I had the tuxedo that I used to wear to Bristol Catholic Players concerts, but by now this was way too big for me. I’d started going to the gym after taking up football and had lost three stone (about forty-two pounds) in less than three months. The tuxedo was now hanging off me, so I had to borrow a couple of cushions and stick them up my shirt to give myself a h
uge belly.

  The next problem was the beard. I went to the joke shop in central Bristol and bought a fake beard. The shop had run out of PVA glue, which is what is used on stage to stick on false beards, so I had to use what I could get hold of. The glue stick I used might have been great for gluing photos and cuttings into a scrapbook, but it was hopeless at sticking a false beard to a face.

  That night the pub was full of colleagues from Tesco, and they hadn’t come empty-handed. As I took to the stage, I could see bagfuls of tomatoes at hand, ready to pelt me if I was rubbish. As I started to sing, I could feel my beard beginning to slip down my chin, and by the end of the performance most of it had ended up on the floor. The singing aspect of my performance, thankfully, was far more successful. To my relief, the rotten tomatoes stayed in their bags: my co-workers were shocked and surprised that I could sing. I didn’t end up winning the competition—it was judged on singing and costume—but that didn’t matter. I had found my calling.

  That joy was to be tempered with shock over the coming two weeks. The next day, I was due to start jury service. I had done jury service once before, while I was a verger at St. Mary Radcliffe Church. I’d found it a fascinating experience, although I had hoped to serve on a more interesting case than the road rage incident we got, and which failed to have any convincing evidence.

  How I was to regret wanting to have a more “interesting” case. I had spent a day or two waiting to be called, when I and fourteen others were ushered into the courtroom. I was one of twelve chosen in what was to be a tough case for me to deal with: the sexual abuse of an eleven-year-old girl by her father.

  The girl was now thirteen, and because her father had pleaded not guilty, she was forced to give evidence against him. That she gave her evidence via video link made it an even more harrowing experience. The interview from the prosecuting barrister was kindly, but still all too revealing, with graphic detail of the abuse she had endured—abuse from someone who should have had nothing but love for her.

  It angered me when the defence barrister started to question her on behalf of the girl’s father. To me it seemed as if the daughter was on trial, not the accused. The defence barrister tried to suggest she had invented what had happened. If she told the court she had made up the whole thing, the barrister promised she wouldn’t be in any trouble. His tone wasn’t unkind, but you could sense the determination with which he wanted to have his client acquitted. His constant suggestions that she had been lying made me feel uncomfortable.

  I could see that the daughter was telling the truth. I recognized the signs. I could tell by how withdrawn she was, and by the pain in her eyes. There was no way that she was telling lies, and there was no way that what her father was accused of could have been an innocent misunderstanding. He had made her perform a sex act on him; it was not a case of a disputed kiss.

  I found myself in a difficult position. I knew she was telling the truth, but I couldn’t tell my fellow jurors why I knew it. Watching that slight little girl bravely give her testimony made me feel like a coward and a weakling. I had never reported the abuse by Burton-Barri, and I could see more reasons to never go to the police. Seeing how strong she had been in the face of the accusation of lying by the defence barrister, I was unsure I would have been the same.

  The judge told the jury that in the absence of physical evidence, the case would come down to whom we believed the most. The girl’s bravery in taking the stand and speaking about what she had been through had impressed me. The whole jury unanimously found him guilty. There was satisfaction that we had put away the bad guy, but I didn’t feel empowered. I knew I wouldn’t have had the courage to do what she had done.

  As difficult as the case had been, nothing was to prepare me for what happened next. With my jury service not yet over, I returned to Bristol Crown Court the following week and waited to find out when I would be called again. As it could be quite a long time before a decision was made, jurors were encouraged to bring with them something to read or listen to. On Tuesday, I finished the book I brought to read and picked up a discarded copy of the Bristol Evening Post.

  As I leafed through it, my heart skipped a beat. Accompanying one news article was the photo of someone I could never forget: Victor Burton-Barri, the Sea Cadet leader who had abused me ten years before. As I read the article, it became clear that I wasn’t his only target. Burton-Barri had pleaded guilty to thirty-three charges of indecent assault and obscene images and three charges of indecency with children, and was now in prison. The report stated that he had been jailed for his offences, for a total of fourteen and a half years.

  I tried to take this information in. I should have felt relieved: Burton-Barri had been locked up and couldn’t abuse any more children. Instead, I felt the opposite. As with the sex abuse case I’d been a juror on, I felt like a fraud; like a coward. The other victims had come forward and been able to tell their story. I had simply absorbed it inside myself, perhaps never to tell what had happened. I had done what I had always done when faced with a problem I felt I couldn’t cope with: I had run away. I had told myself that if I didn’t admit it had happened, then it really hadn’t.

  I didn’t just feel powerless and weak; I also felt the firm vice-like feeling of guilt. It had been twelve years since the abuse from Burton-Barri started. What had I said to him? Nothing. What had I said to anyone else? Again, nothing. I had passed him on the street in Fishponds some years before. Had I pointed the finger at my abuser? No! I had gone on pretending it had never happened, because admitting it would be like admitting I was worthless.

  The “what ifs?” started in my mind. How many other children had he abused after me? If I’d had the courage to come forward, how many other children would have been spared abuse at his hands? I blamed myself, not just for allowing him to touch me, and not just for being unable to defend myself. Through my own inadequacies, I had enabled him to abuse countless other children.

  It was my fault. I’d known it all this time, and yet I had remained silent. It was in the past, so I couldn’t change it. God knows, at that stage in my life I had wanted to scream “STOP IT!” To report it and see him punished for what he had done to me, and to stop him from going on to abuse other children.

  I remembered that poor girl in court having to take the cross-examination from the defence barrister. How would I have coped with that? Would I have wilted? I didn’t know. All I could be sure of was that because I was a coward, other children would forever be blighted by abuse that could have been avoided. I feel that guilt even today, although now that I’m older I realize that I was his victim, and like many victims, I was simply too terrified to come forward.

  There was one silver lining to the dark cloud I had been under during jury service: the ITV quiz show My Kind of Music was doing local auditions for singers. I had missed the Bristol date due to jury service, but when my service ended a day early, I had another chance: I could use my unexpected day off to go up to London and take part in the next audition.

  My Kind of Music was a mixture of game show and singing competition. I had been uncertain about applying, but some of the other karaoke singers at the Horn and Trumpet encouraged me to audition. After much pushing, they got an application form and made me fill it in. They then sent it off on my behalf, to stop me from “not getting round” to posting it.

  On a dull, dank day, I got on the National Express bus bound for London and headed down to the auditions, which took place in a Brixton dance studio. There was a pianist there, and a panel of three to sing in front of. I performed “Nessun Dorma” again, using the same backing-track CD I had used in the Horn and Trumpet (although this time I left the false beard at home). The panel’s response was difficult to gauge, and I started the long journey back to Bristol with no idea whether or not I had been successful.

  A few days later, however, I got a letter saying I had been selected to perform at the next level. This time it wouldn’t be in a private room in front of a handful of peopl
e: the next audition was to be held in public, in a shopping mall: Merry Hill Shopping Centre in Dudley, in the West Midlands. To add to the tension, the TV company would be filming the auditions, with only a select few going on to the final stages of the competition.

  Being typically last minute, I still hadn’t memorised the words to “Nessun Dorma.” As my audition time crept closer, it dawned on me that I was going to look an idiot standing up there with a book in my hand. Sometimes at karaoke I’d bring my own tracks with me, so I was used to singing without the words coming up on the screen. Usually I listened to the sample vocal supplied with the backing track. I would listen to the track repeatedly, and then the words would embed themselves in my mind.

  In the familiar surroundings of the Horn and Trumpet, the method was fine. But this was completely different. The shopping mall was packed with thousands of people, and there were cameras all round to catch any mistakes. A researcher came over and told me I needed to make my way to the sound desk in the next ten minutes. That was all the time I had to learn the words!

  As I made my way to the stage, it wasn’t just the audience I was nervous of, but also the host of the show. Michael Barrymore was one of the hottest properties on British TV at the time. He was incredibly tall, towering over me as I took my place, and had great charisma. He’d enjoyed a string of successful TV shows, a well-known catchphrase in the form of “Awright?” and held audiences in the palm of his hand. He was also well known for being unpredictable. As I was waiting my turn, I watched him trying to distract the other contestants, much to the delight of the audience.

  I didn’t have to wait long to find out what he had in store for me. The very short introduction to “Nessun Dorma” didn’t give me much time to settle, and as I sang (in very bad Italian indeed), Michael grabbed a baby from a mother standing close by.