by John McShane
‘Boyle will be back in the semi-finals of Britain’s Got Talent in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, she’s had a wee polish, as the folks in her town of Blackburn might say. It’s nothing radical – she hasn’t gone the whole Joan Collins, with a small, glossy mammal affixed to her head, or taken to the scalpel like Joan Rivers, so that her eyebrows orbit Jupiter.
‘No, our sensible Susan – because we all feel we own a piece of her now – has put on a sharp leather jacket and a Burberry scarf, and taken the grey from her hair. Her eyebrows might have visited a trainer… This, predictably, has led some of her fans to cry treachery, as if by making herself more conventionally attractive, Boyle has undercut her authenticity. What cobblers! She’s just following the same script that Hollywood (and now, London) has always provided women who need a bit of help in the glamour department.’
The article went on to say that Susan’s journey was a familiar narrative, and that Britain’s Got Talent was all about familiar narratives. ‘People weep at the clip of her singing not because they feel sorry for her but because it’s a reminder of every loser-makes-good, beauty-on-the-inside fairy tale we’ve ever been told, and want desperately to believe. Taking her out of that safe box marked “loser” dilutes the fairy tale a bit, but the box can’t hold her forever… When Boyle sheds her frumpy cocoon, she’s messing with the storyline. Good for her. The press in Britain will continue to call her “hairy angel”, “47-year-old virgin” and “West Lothian spinster”, but I sense that Susan’s got a bit too much personality to lie still while the labels are affixed. There’s a showgirl in there, and showgirls need sequins.’
Although she had stayed local for that first makeover, Mayfair stylist Nicky Clarke, whose clients had included Diana, Princess of Wales, singers George Michael and David Bowie, actress Liz Hurley and many other stars, said he was due to have a consultation soon with Susan, pointing out, somewhat ungallantly, if the reports were accurate: ‘At the moment she looks a bit like a man in drag, but there’s a lot of potential there and when I’ve finished she is going to look really beautiful. I’m going to soften her hair with lowlights, which will freshen the face up. She will look stunning.’
No wonder Simon Cowell said he was fed up with stories about Susan’s hair, eyebrows and cat and urged her to focus now on winning the television talent competition.
‘She has got four weeks to prepare for the biggest night of her life, and she has got to sing better than she sang before with all those expectations on her. But it could all go horribly wrong for her because there are so many other distractions,’ Cowell told TV reporters in Los Angeles. ‘Get yourself together sweetheart for the big one – the semi-final. Shut the door, choose the right song and come back as who you are, not who you want to be,’ he said.
Another, although somewhat different word of caution, came from Susan’s brother Gerry, who reckoned that his sister should capitalise on her newfound fame. ‘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.’ And he warned, ‘When I last spoke to Susan she sounded exhausted. 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 and I could tell she was shattered. I said to her, “Get off the phone and get to bed. You need to rest.”’
Gerry added, ‘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.
‘She’s normally oblivious to what’s going on around her. But now she’s realising, “Why can’t I do this, why can’t I do that?”’
He even said all the attention meant that Susan had not been able to attend mass at her church. ‘I have stayed away from what used to be our family house because there’s so many people camped out there. It’s been like a scene from the film Notting Hill every time she opens the front door.’ Susan had to go to her sister’s home in Motherwell at one stage to escape the media frenzy, although she had no plans to move permanently from her own home.
‘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.’ He added, ‘Is there a management deal or not? I imagined Cowell would move forward on this. But she’s got too big for the show.
‘We’ve got a star on our hands and the appetite for her first record is huge. From a business point of view they are not capitalising 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.’
Susan’s response to this, and to suggestions that she might leave the show as the pressure was by now too great for her was, ‘There is no way I am quitting. The only way I’d leave the show is if Simon Cowell kicked me out.
‘All I can promise is to do my best and confirm to everyone that I’m not leaving the show.’
She had to admit, however, that life was now hectic. ‘I’ve been on American TV a lot and I’ve never even visited America. It’s crazy.
‘I would go, definitely, if that’s what they want. I’m not changing my accent or anything. If I’m talking to people I don’t know then I’ll put my posh voice on. But I’m Scottish and there’s nothing they can do about that. I’ve lived here all my life. I wouldn’t want to move anywhere else at the moment.
‘I usually sing a lot when I do the housework. But I have neglected my home a little bit – the house definitely needs a tidy. I will never be too famous to tidy my own house. I do my own cleaning, I find it very therapeutic.
‘I didn’t realise the attention would be on this scale. When I entered I didn’t think anything would come of it. I never expected it to be so mad, but I am loving it. I will need a holiday after all of this is over.’
How fame is measured is a difficult question to answer in the modern world. One old standard that was used was simply the number of newspaper column inches a celebrity could tot up. The more inches the greater the fame. That was overtaken by how much airtime was devoted to them on television, and, in the past few years the number of hits generated on the internet, through YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and all the other social-networking sites.
But the growth of the ‘celebrity magazine’ added a new dimension. If you weren’t in OK! or Hello! then you weren’t a celebrity; it followed as surely as night followed day, didn’t it?
So it came to pass that Susan Boyle, who had dreamed her dreams while looking into a mirror and singing into her hairbrush in her council home in West Lothian, was – in the breathless language so loved by the magazines – ‘speaking exclusively to OK! about her sudden success and her secret kiss!’
She told the magazine:
‘I wish I’d never said that I’d never been kissed – I only meant it as a joke! I have lived a life. They just don’t know about it! There’s plenty of time to find love. I’d like to visit America, but I’m a wee bit reserved about the men. I like to keep myself to myself. Being myself hasn’t done me any harm so far. If you lose your identity you become something that’s false and people stop believing in you. Why should I go for Botox and things like that? You don’t need all that. If you can’t be yourself then who can you be?’
There had been stories that a film of her life was being mooted, some reports even suggesting Catherine Zeta-Jones as a somewhat unlikely figure to play Susan. ‘It would be a knockout if they made a film of me – but that’s for the future. I just want to concentrate on the present. It’s baby steps! I’ll think about which actress I want to play me nearer the time!
‘I
would love to be in a musical or a film, but this is all too far off in the future. People used to tell me I should make my voice known to people – but I felt I wasn’t mature enough to handle the attention. I’m strong enough to do it now. Finding the strength to cope after my mum died proved that to me. I hope my mum is proud of me now. It’s all for her, my family and the people who support me.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE PRESSURE
MOUNTS
BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, broadcast every morning from Monday through until Saturday, is an institution. The long-running current-affairs programme is the most listened to on Radio 4 and its influence is immense. It has the latest on the day’s news, covers breaking stories throughout its time on air and delivers in-depth interviews with leading figures. It has more than six million listeners, a massive number, and is widely considered to be the most influential news programme in Britain. The size of its audience isn’t the only barometer by which its impact is measured either; its demographic also forms a key part of its influence – it is the movers and shakers’ ‘must-listen’ radio.
One of its regular features is Thought for the Day. Many of those who give this brief talk on a theological matter have become household names, most notably Rabbi Lionel Blue and Richard Harries, the former Bishop of Oxford. The talk has an ancestry that predates the programme itself; a religious topic has been discussed on the network, including its predecessor the BBC Home Service, in roughly the same breakfast-time slot since 1939. Its speakers are normally Christians, but many other religions have been included, too.
On 23 April the speaker on Thought for the Day was The Reverend Angela Tilby, vicar of St Benet’s Church in Cambridge. And she discussed Susan Boyle. She didn’t just mention her in passing either; she actually compared her Britain’s Got Talent appearance and the reaction to it with the impact Jesus would have had on those who came to hear him speak. No matter how valid or tenuous the connection, her impact was now being compared with the son of God. Yes, it was getting this serious.
‘The odd thing,’ Reverend Tilby remarked, ‘is that what was so moving about her performance was the sheer dissonance between face and voice. People assumed that because she was not glamorous she couldn’t have talent. Yet in the midst of the catcalls she simply said, “I’m going to make this audience rock”. And she did. She had real authority. Authority is a strange word to use in this context, but that is what I saw when I watched her on YouTube.
‘It has reminded me bizarrely of the way the Gospels speak of Jesus. On the one hand they claim he had an authority which was utterly convincing. Yet at the same time he is identified with the broken figure from the book of Isaiah. One with no beauty that we should desire, despised and rejected of men, one from whom men hide their faces.’
It was a remarkable comparison to make, and as The Times noted: ‘This is a pretty hefty burden to place on Boyle’s shoulders.’ An understatement if ever there was one. To compare her impact with that of Christ’s, where was it all going to end?
As far-fetched as some thought the comparison was, at least it was an observation delivered with love and goodwill as its central theme. The same could not be said of another reaction to one fleeting fragment of that historic appearance.
While Susan had been talking to the judges prior to her audition song, the cameras had flitted across the faces of those in the audience. Slouched low in one of the theatre’s seats was a pretty young girl who, like so many around her, looked both surprised and dismissive, her slight rolling of the eyes showed that she was both amused and disbelieving.
Yet her innocent reaction was to make her the subject of a hate campaign that was to be labelled ‘internet fascism’. A clip of Susan’s BGT audition had provoked a host of abusive and threatening posts against the teenager, nicknamed the ‘1:24 girl’ because she appears just under one and a half minutes into the clip.
One read: ‘Talk about never judging a book by its cover. [By the way], anybody else feel like punching the chick at 1:24 in the face?’
‘Not enough has been said over her: the girl at 1:24,’ adds another ‘Can we not find her and name and shame her, please? She leaves a bitter aftertaste in my mouth.’ Friends of the teenager even said the show’s producers singled her out in the editing of Susan’s performance and that the young woman was ‘extremely upset’ by the campaign, adding ‘everyone in the venue was in exactly the same boat, booing Susan and heckling her before she had even begun to sing.’
Susan sprang to her defence. ‘Leave the poor girl alone,’ she said. ‘She had the same reaction as the judges and everyone else in the theatre; she does not deserve this treatment.’
The programme makers were concerned enough about the development to say: ‘She shouldn’t be a target and we would ask her to get in contact if she has any concerns.’
Eventually the girl was identified as Jennifer Byrne, 18, now a great fan of Susan’s, who felt it unfair that she had her face shown on air. Hairdresser Jennifer said, ‘It was a split-second reaction that changed my life. All I did was roll my eyes and I’m targeted by a hate campaign for months. I just can’t believe how I have been targeted by total strangers around the world who don’t even know what kind of person I am. I really didn’t mean any harm. I think Susan’s a fantastic singer who deserves all of her success.
‘I’ve been pretty shocked by it all and I really just want it all to stop now. They could have filmed 100 people around me with exactly the same expressions.’
Twisted strangers had made contact with Jennifer’s friends with messages like: ‘That wee bitch will burn in hell’ and ‘Anyone smacked the bitch yet?’
‘Going to the BGT auditions was supposed to be a great night out with pals,’ Jennifer went on to say. ‘I can’t believe how it all turned out. What really bothers me is how the production company only kept in that split-second shot of me when there were hundreds of other people doing exactly the same thing.’ Jennifer, who went with eight friends to the audition, added, ‘We were quite near the front so we had a really good view. I knew that the camera was close by us, but as the night went on we forgot it was there because we were just having such a good time.
‘When Susan came on, everyone in the audience thought she looked a bit odd, wiggling her hips to the judges. Everybody thought her audition was going to be a disaster – there had been some terrible ones earlier. All I did was roll my eyes the same as everyone else in the audience, including Simon Cowell. She just looked a bit out of place. Some people near us were shouting to her before she had even started singing. But when she sang, we all just jumped to our feet. And as soon as I got home I told my mum about this amazing singer and how she could probably win the competition. What really annoys me is that the producers didn’t show me when I was up clapping and cheering Susan. It looks as though I didn’t appreciate her, which is not true.’
Three months later, the programme was transmitted. ‘We were all sitting watching it and then suddenly my face popped up. I couldn’t believe it. All my pals started texting saying they’d seen me. But even then I said to my mum, “Why did they show me looking like that?” Within a few days people started messaging me on the internet with some really nasty stuff. They were saying things like “Let’s get the bitch” and “We’ll hunt her down and slap her”. It was really upsetting to see such horrible things being said about you. Over the weeks and months it got worse and worse. One day I was on the train and somebody recognised me and started to try to film me on their mobile phone. It was pretty spooky. At one point my pal put a jumper over my head just to stop them.’
Poor Jennifer was even booed by the audience when the clip appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show in America. A Facebook page was set up by supporters of Susan in which Jennifer was criticised and the attacks continued on online forums.
Jennifer reckoned she was getting a much harder time of it than Sharon Osbourne, who had come out with a personal and vulgar attack on Susan. ‘It’s pretty shocking when
you see the really horrible stuff she said and she escaped with a quick apology.’ She added, ‘It really meant a lot when Susan defended me. At least she knows I’m a big fan,’ she told the Sunday Mail newspaper in Scotland.
One thing the campaign hadn’t done was cause Jennifer to develop an aversion to Britain’s Got Talent. ‘I love all these kinds of shows. I’ve applied for tickets for the auditions in Glasgow again next year – but I won’t be sitting anywhere near any cameras.’
Young Jennifer wasn’t the only one caught in the wake of Susan’s fame: an MP was forced into an embarrassing public apology after jokingly linking Susan’s success with swine flu. Siôn Simon, Minister for Further Education in the then Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills made the ‘joke’ on Twitter, shortly before Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced details of British cases.
‘I’m not saying Susan Boyle caused swine flu,’ he said. ‘I’m just saying that nobody had swine flu, she sang on TV, people got swine flu.’ But he later apologised on Twitter, saying, ‘Earlier I repeated a joke that was in poor taste, which I now regret. I apologise wholeheartedly for any distress or embarrassment caused.’
The public had taken to Susan in their millions, but that couldn’t prevent some unkind people deriding her and her looks. On Graham Norton’s chat show he and Little Britain star Matt Lucas both made unkind remarks about her and the ensuing publicity she had received.
Lucas joked about whether Susan was in a Top 100 sexiest women list yet, and then he said, ‘She is definitely the best singer I have seen that looks like Bernard Manning.’ Norton then added, ‘For a hairy woman with thick ankles she is amazing. But as a singer she is just OK.’