by John McShane
Muir finished, in that senatorial voice so essential to a newscaster in America: ‘Susan Boyle, the church worker, with one God-given voice. David Muir, ABC News, New York.’
Gibson ended the report by saying, ‘Her performance has been a hit online. Last time we checked the video had been watched more than 3.5 million times. More than a million just today, and she is now the overwhelming favourite to win the British talent competition.’
Ah yes, the internet, that worldwide system of interconnected computer networks that serves a global audience of billions. It has changed the world we live in and it was to change Susan Boyle’s life, too.
If she had been born a generation earlier then perhaps she would not have achieved that level of fame that was to be hers. The internet, and especially the YouTube showing of her BGT audition, are an integral part of her story and one that we will deal with in detail later on.
That figure of 3.5 million hits on YouTube mentioned in the American newscast, phenomenal as it was in such a short space of time, would soon be dwarfed as the world logged on to Susan Boyle.
But what was it about her that generated the interest? True, her voice was wonderful, but would it have given rise to such praise if it had been coming from a singer who fitted the physical ‘identikit’ until then deemed necessary for stardom? Youth, glamour, a ‘showbiz’ personality and the flowing locks of a goddess. And sex appeal too.
None of these could be attributed to Susan. And yet, there she was, climbing to unknown heights.
But why was everyone, from the judges to that Glasgow audience, from the millions watching on television to the soon-to-be hundreds of millions on the internet, so taken aback? Why was the astonishment she generated of such proportions? Never mind what it said about Susan Boyle, what did it say about the watching world?
The Times noted: ‘Susan Boyle, the dowdy Scottish spinster who dumbfounded the judges and won-over the audience of Britain’s Got Talent with her extraordinary singing voice despite, as she put it, “looking like a garage”, says she hopes her arresting debut on the TV talent show will remind people not to judge by appearances.
‘Ms Boyle, 48, from Blackburn, West Lothian, who is now tipped to win the contest, said that she hopes her story will set an example to the nation. “Modern society is too quick to judge people on their appearances,” she said. “There is not much you can do about it; it is the way they think; it is the way they are. But maybe this could teach them a lesson, or set an example.”
‘At the pre-recorded audition, broadcast four days ago, audience members laughed at the frizzy-haired, churchgoing Catholic who lives alone with her cat in a rundown council estate, when she said she wanted to follow in the footsteps of the West End star Elaine Paige. Nevertheless, she said, she was determined to show them she has what it takes. “What you do is ignore that and get on with your act. You have to,” Ms Boyle said.
‘Minutes later the audience were on their feet, applauding wildly after her soaring rendition of ‘I Dreamed a Dream’, from Les Misérables.
‘Born with a learning disability, Ms Boyle dreamed of becoming a professional singer but in order to care for her elderly mother, Bridget, limited her efforts to the church choir and karaoke.’
The article described the incredible change in her circumstances. ‘Today, she is a worldwide sensation, a clip of her performance from the show has been viewed almost 2.5 million times on YouTube, and made it on to the news schedules in the United States. Prior to her TV debut Ms Boyle, who is unemployed, spent her days shopping, doing her housework, and occasionally visiting one of her eight siblings. Overnight she has become a national celebrity but is determined not to change.
“‘I’ve had people recognising me, but I have gone on as normal – I am very down to earth,” she said.
‘Her ambition is to see her name in lights in London’s West End. “It is early days yet,” she says, but hints that there may already be a deal in the pipeline. “Baby steps,” she replies, when asked if she has had any offers.
‘She believes her age and life experience is her biggest asset: “It gives you faith in your abilities,” she said. “I think I am ready for it.”’
CHAPTER FOUR
MAKING THE
HEADLINES
Susan Boyle ‘looked like a garage’ when she appeared on Britain’s Got Talent.
It was a devastating verdict on a middle-aged woman, a cruel comment to make, harsh, uncaring and insulting. It wasn’t even a particularly good simile. Susan was hardly likely to take exception to it, however. She was the person who said it. She had actually watched the show when it was finally transmitted in her council house in Blackburn.
‘They say TV makes you look fat and it certainly did. I looked like a garage. It was mortifying to see and a bit of a shock. I didn’t realise I could reduce people to tears and I hope it wasn’t because of that. I’m proud to be part of the show. It really is a dream come true.’
Then she made a telling remark, similar to ones that many others were to make in the ensuing mayhem, yet all the more insightful given that it was she who was making it.
‘Modern society is too quick to judge people on their appearances. There is not much you can do about it; it is the way they think; it is the way they are. But maybe this could teach them a lesson, or set an example.
‘What you do is ignore that and get on with your act. You have to. I like the way I am just fine. Why should I change a thing? It is my singing voice that matters first and foremost. I know there has been a lot of talk about the need for change, but my singing is the only thing that matters right now. Appearance is not everything – I am happy with the way I look.’
By the time she made these remarks, Susan had already received a standing ovation when she walked into her local Catholic church for Easter service. ‘It was incredible. Although we sing in church, not a lot of them knew how good I was, so it was a bit of a shock to them. I’m a bit shy and retiring so they would never have known. It was very emotional. Everyone is very nice and it’s lovely when all the kids stop me in the street to congratulate me.’
‘I’ve had people recognising me, but I have gone on as normal – I am very down to earth,’ she said.
‘I’ll get used to the fame side of things with baby steps – one step at a time. I am enjoying it very much just now. It’s very good. I’ll take the fame in my stride.’
She would have to, for now that the initial astonishment at her performance was over, the assessments began.
In any analysis of Susan Boyle and the impact she made, not just on television or show business but on society as a whole, it is necessary to examine in detail the reaction to her appearance and performance that Saturday evening.
The media do not always ‘get it right’. In fact, they quite often get it wrong. But that cannot be said to be correct in Susan’s case.
To be successful, and true to the public, they have to reflect the interests of those who read, watch or listen to them. So the reaction to those few minutes on a Glasgow stage was, in fact, a gigantic echo of the sentiment that was already building up in the public’s mind.
A Sun writer said in one tribute: ‘I send this message to the one and only Susan Boyle: Don’t sweat it, m’dear. Because the rest of us were simply mesmerised. Now, given the choice between reality shows as fake as a nylon fur coat, talent shows brimming with the talentless, and a fork in the eye, blindness wins almost every time.
‘The exception being the blue-moon occasions when the cynical millionaires behind these humiliation-based circuses of hate get it right. And it superglues you to the couch… And now, on the screaming train-wreck that is Britain’s Got Talent, we have Susan. A woman who is reality TV. Because she is an ordinary person doing something extraordinary.
‘Untouched by human hand, this girl. Literally. Kicking 50, never had a boyfriend. Eyebrows you could knit into a jumper, dress sense nicked from the drag queens on the paper towel adverts. But the voice? Borrowed from h
eaven itself.
‘As little angels carried each note from her tonsils on velvet pillows, here – at last – we had found what shows like these were created for… Susan Boyle has a genuine gift that would never have been heard out with her own church hall but for this programme.
‘The combination of her look and sound takes us back to the days of Opportunity Knocks, when it was what you did that counted, not what a wicked step-father had done to you.’
They went on to describe her in some ways as a throwback that should be celebrated. ‘We should pray that her vocal cords stay healthy so she keeps on brightening Saturday night for millions. Most of all, we should hope she does so while remaining the person she wants to be… This lady, though, is who she is and the world should respect her for it.’
An opinion piece in the Daily Express continued the theme:
‘The nation needed an Easter treat this year. Susan Boyle was that treat. On Saturday evening nearly 12 million people sat down to watch Britain’s Got Talent. When she came on, multitudes would have yelled through their sitting room doorway: “Quick, come in and see this woman, she’s fantastic.” And a billion tears will have been shed. You didn’t need Amanda Holden-style waterworks for this; everyone could do it (including your correspondent). If you missed Susan and you have internet, you can watch her on YouTube. By yesterday teatime 1,100,000 had. By now there will be many more.’
The article went on to describe the reaction of the judges. ‘Simon Cowell’s eyebrows rose an inch or two and he unleashed a gleaming white smile, Amanda curled her lip over her teeth and opened her eyes wider and Piers Morgan smiled broadly, and not in self-satisfaction. Within seconds the whole audience was on its feet, clapping and cheering. In the world of Britain’s Got Talent they don’t react, they overreact; they don’t breathe, they hyperventilate. This time overreaction and hyperventilating were very much in order.’
And of her song choice: ‘Her choice of song had been perfect… one of those mock-operatic numbers that gave her voice the chance to knock your socks off.
‘The lyrics about forlorn hope meshed movingly with the woman singing them – 47 years old but looking older, clearly not terribly attentive to making the most of her appearance, unemployed, has spent years caring for her mother who died two years ago, leaving her devastated. Sounds sad, doesn’t it? But I think we know she isn’t.
‘She’s funny. Introducing herself to the judges, she says she’s 47, then does a little shimmy and adds “that’s just one side of me”. A devout Catholic though certainly no church mouse, she’s a performer.’
The article continued: ‘Some contestants are very gifted, some up to a point; others are ridiculously untalented and often ridiculous in other ways too. Some are just tragic. Because Susan Boyle is no beauty, because she is not young, because she is single and spent her life with her mother in one of Scotland’s less scenic villages, you might have thought she was being wheeled on as one of the tragic or at least tragic-comic. For the audience there was a “Heavens, what’s this?” moment.
‘Then she opened her lungs and sang and everyone knew it was a “Heavens, listen to this” moment. For Susan, who said she wanted a career like Elaine Paige’s, it must have been divine. For the rest of us, it was a double-value, double-take.
‘With absolute impunity we could now admit our shallowness: confess that when we first saw her we thought she was going to be a joke because she was a plain-looking middle-aged woman who hadn’t had her hair or eyebrows done.
‘Now we can congratulate ourselves on rising above that. We really care only about how beautiful her voice is. Aren’t we wise and good to understand so clearly and feel so strongly that talent is all and beauty is only skin deep? Doubtless there are quite a lot of other women in Britain who would amaze us with their singing if they got the chance, but that is not the issue. Susan Boyle is this week’s sensation. She has stood on stage and had the pleasure of seeing an audience knocked sideways. She has witnessed Simon enthusing, Amanda emoting and Piers exaggerating. She has given us a moment to remember for some time and herself an Easter she will never forget.’
Even the Daily Mail’s acerbic columnist Jan Moir had to note:
‘Susan Boyle, the Hairy Angel, looks incredibly familiar to me. Perhaps it is just because there are so many moustachioed women in my Scottish homeland? However, I do worry about Susan. Before and after her performance on Britain’s Got Talent last week, she appeared emotionally fragile, to say the least. That hip-swinging dance for Simon! Her perverted desire to kiss Piers! Yet there is something about her voice that stirs souls. When she sings, she seems complete in a way that evades her in real life. It is quite a performance.’
It wasn’t just the popular press who had taken notice of Susan, however. The Times said: ‘Susan Boyle is the ugly duckling who didn’t need to turn into a swan; she has fulfilled the dreams of millions who, downtrodden by the cruelty of a culture that judges them on their appearance, have settled for life without looking in the mirror.
‘This is a huge constituency, and it is weary of being disparaged. Women need an avenging force like Susan Boyle. No matter how brave, strong or resourceful they are, they get punished for not being glamorous; for being ordinary; careworn. At best they are treated as if they are invisible, at worst they are regarded as freaks. Which is what the TV audience did with Ms Boyle until she started to sing.’
The ‘bible’ of the left-wing intelligentsia, the Guardian, had its own view of the sensation. And they put into print both what many felt and raised points many others were to raise in the ensuing months. Writer Tanya Gold poised the question:
‘Is Susan Boyle ugly? Or are we? On Saturday night she stood on the stage in Britain’s Got Talent; small and rather chubby, with a squashed face, unruly teeth and unkempt hair. She wore a gold lace dress, which made her look like a piece of pork sitting on a doily…Why are we so shocked when “ugly” women can do things, rather than sitting at home weeping and wishing they were somebody else? Men are allowed to be ugly and talented. Alan Sugar looks like a burst bag of flour. Gordon Ramsay has a dried-up riverbed for a face. Justin Lee Collins looks like Cousin Itt from The Addams Family. Graham Norton is a baboon in mascara. I could go on. But a woman has to have the bright, empty beauty of a toy – or get off the screen. We don’t want to look at you. Except on the news, where you can weep because some awful personal tragedy has befallen you.’
After criticising the judges’ reactions, she continued, ‘And then Susan sang. She stood with her feet apart, like a Scottish Edith Piaf, and very slowly began to sing. It was wonderful.
‘The judges were astonished. They gasped, they gaped, they clapped. They looked almost ashamed. I was briefly worried that Simon might stab himself with a pencil, and mutter, “Et tu, Piers, for we have wronged Susan in thinking that because she is a munter, she is entirely useless.”
‘How could they have misjudged her, they gesti-culated. But how could they not? No makeup? Bad teeth? Funny hair? Is she insane, this sad little Scottish spinster, beloved only of Pebbles the Cat?’
The Guardian piece continued: ‘I know what you will say. You will say that Paul Potts, the fat opera singer with the equally squashed face who won Britain’s Got Talent in 2007, had just as hard a time at his first audition. I looked it up on YouTube. He did not. “I wasn’t expecting that,” said Simon to Paul. “Neither was I,” said Amanda. “You have an incredible voice,” said Piers. And that was it. No laughter, or invitations to paranoia, or mocking wolf-whistles, or smirking, or derision.
‘We see this all the time in popular culture. Do you ever stare at the TV and wonder where the next generation of Judi Denches and Juliet Stevensons have gone? Have they fallen down a RADA wormhole? Yes. They’re not there, because they aren’t pretty enough to get airtime. This lust for homogeneity in female beauty means that when someone who doesn’t resemble a diagram in a plastic surgeon’s office steps up to the microphone, people fall about and treat us to despicable
sub-John Gielgud gestures of amazement.
‘Susan will probably win Britain’s Got Talent. She will be the little munter that could sing, served up for the British public every Saturday night.’
The writer added: ‘Look! It’s “ugly”! It sings! And I know that we think that this will make us better people. But Susan Boyle will be the freakish exception that makes the rule. By raising this Susan up, we will forgive ourselves for grinding every other Susan into the dust. It will be a very partial and poisoned redemption. Because Britain’s Got Malice. Sing, Susan, sing – to an ugly crowd that doesn’t deserve you.’
An astonishingly accurate dissection of the events of the previous few days – or simply ‘a different take’ by the Guardian on what had happened? Even if the article had hit the nail on the head, or at the least touched on some dark feelings within many people, nothing could be done to stop the rollercoaster that was SuBo.
The Daily Mirror adopted a similar, if somewhat more punchy, approach:
‘Just for a moment, let’s switch the sound off. Let’s not listen to Susan Boyle’s glorious, heavenly voice. Let’s just contemplate her friendly face, her cheeky hip wiggle, the twinkle in her eye.
‘Even before she opened her mouth and let that beautiful sound pour out, Susan looked a darn sight more fun than the frozen-faced freaks who were judging her. Apparently Simon Cowell and Amanda Holden were surprised. How could anyone tell? What the Britain’s Got Talent judges were shocked by wasn’t Susan’s amazing musical gift. They were shocked by her appearance.
‘Were you? Me neither. She just looked like a straightforwardly nice woman to me. A bit of a laugh, a pillar of her community, a decent person who looks after others for no other reason than she thinks it’s right. Yet she was presented as a hopeless case. Look at her! A 47year-old unemployed cat owner who wouldn’t know fashion if it slapped her on the Hermès Birkin. She’s a stranger to tweezers. She’s “never been kissed”.’