Susan Boyle (15 page)

Ultimately, though, Susan came to see the gift that she’d been given - her beautiful voice - as a way of reconnecting with her mother and, eventually, fulfilling the dreams her mother had had for her . . . but not yet. The rawness of the emotions she was feeling was too much to bear, silencing her temporarily. And it wasn’t just grief she was feeling - although that was a huge part of it - it was isolation too. At the time, Susan must have felt as if she would never be free of the burden of unhappiness she was carrying, and as though she had reached the limit of what life had to offer her.

Her family was aware of what she was going through. ‘It was easier for the rest of us because we had husbands, wives and partners, but Susan was on her own,’ said Gerard. ‘It was just her left in the family home, which had gone from a hive of activity over the years down to just her. But as time has gone on Susan has got stronger. She realizes Mum has gone now and has come to terms with it and taken strength from that.’

The despair Susan felt in the wake of her mother’s death combined with the despair she felt about where her life was going. It was not just a case of not being able to sing: she didn’t
want
to sing, either. All those dreams of being another Elaine Paige had come to nothing - Susan had done as much as she could, and she didn’t have the energy to try any more. There was a feeling that this was it: this was what her life had amounted to. All the promise of youth and her beautiful voice had come to nothing. There was nothing to hope for any more.

This was confirmed by those who knew her. ‘She always had a vision of herself as a singer, but last year she told me she wasn’t going to sing any more,’ her voice coach Fred O’Neil told the
Sunday Times
in the wake of Susan’s triumph on
Britain’s Got Talent
. ‘I remember a phone call late last year when she said she was too old and that it was a young person’s game.’ But Fred had been training her for the longer term: ‘When I first heard her sing, it was obvious she had a naturally good voice and our work was to make sure it lasted a lifetime and that it was extended to its full capacity,’ he continued. ‘That [the audition] was her just gearing up, she can sing better than that.’

She was in no state to do so back then, though; as far as Susan was concerned, it was all over. But into even the blackest grief and despair, some light eventually shines, and so it was with Susan. After a period of intense suffering, she began to look at life in a different way. The raw grief was mellowing into acceptance, and Susan was beginning to think about what her mother had really meant to her, and what Bridget had encouraged her to do. And what Bridget had wanted was for Susan to sing.

Not only that, she wanted Susan to get out there and show the world what she could do. Yes, Susan had made some earlier attempts to get noticed, but Bridget didn’t want her to give up. She didn’t think Susan was too old, and she believed she had a good chance of arousing people’s interest. In addition, Bridget was a great fan of talent shows such as
The X Factor
-
Britain’s Got Talent
aired for the first time shortly after her death - and she thought her daughter should give it a go.

‘Mum loved the show and used to tell me I should put my name down and that I’d win it if I did,’ Susan told the
Daily Mail
. ‘But I never thought I was good enough. It was only after she died that I plucked up the courage to enter. It was a very dark time and I suffered depression and anxiety. But out of the darkness came light. I realized I wanted to make her proud of me, and the only way to do that was to take the risk and enter the show.’

By entering the show - although it would be
Britain’s Got Talent
, rather than
The X Factor -
Susan would be re-establishing a relationship with her mother and fulfilling Bridget’s ambitions for her. And so from the depths of despair arose new drive and determination. If Bridget had thought she was good enough to be on the programme then, as an act of love for her mother, Susan would prove her right.

Something else had happened to give her some encouragement. Earlier in the book it’s stated that all reality-TV talent show winners are young and pretty, including the boys, but there had, in fact, been one exception to that rule: Paul Potts - he of the interesting dentistry, who had won the first series of
Britain’s Got Talent
when it aired in June 2007. Susan had seen the show and realized that despite Potts not being conventionally handsome, he’d still managed to win. An idea began to form in her mind.

‘I had a bit of a rest after my mum died, but I had seen
Britain’s Got Talent
on TV and thought I would have a go,’ was how she summed it up. ‘Paul Potts was really good. He was an inspiration to a lot of people and I thought I would take my chances.’

It was a good call, so Susan got in touch with the makers of
Britain’s Got Talent
- there were rumours that, after hearing about her remarkable voice, they got in touch with her, but there doesn’t appear to be any truth in the story - and began to prepare for her performance. It was a brave thing to do. Susan was aware by then that she wasn’t conventionally pretty (although she had been when she was younger), and she’d had to endure Michael Barrymore clowning around and mocking her in his usual tasteless way. She’d also put up with being taunted by certain people in her village, and throughout her life she’d had to cope with the fact that many people thought she’d never amount to anything. She was also, whether she realized it or not, setting herself up for potential humiliation. The judges on
Britain’s Got Talent
, Simon Cowell in particular, were not known for their gentle demeanour, and the audience could be pretty brutal, too. For a gentle, vulnerable woman like Susan, it was tantamount to entering a bear pit. But she wanted to do it for her mother all the same.

‘I realized I wanted to make my mum proud of me, and the only way to do that was to take the risk and enter the show,’ she said. In time-honoured fashion, Susan started rehearsing for her appearance by singing while looking in a mirror, holding a hairbrush as the microphone, ‘Well, that’s what everyone does,’ she explained. ‘I practised for a couple of weeks before the show, at least an hour a day.’

That in itself was a major breakthrough: not only was Susan singing again, she was doing so at length, fine-tuning her voice and getting it back up to scratch. Susan was reconnecting with something right at the very heart of her. Her ability to sing not only enabled her to communicate, but to prove her worth to the rest of the world.

Susan had already established something of a repertoire, including ‘Memories’, ‘Cry Me A River’ and ‘Killing Me Softly’, but it was with ‘I Dreamed A Dream’ that she decided to wow the programme makers. And what an appropriate title it was. Although the song itself deals with a woman whose illusions have been shattered, it couldn’t have summed up Susan’s situation better: a woman closer to fifty than forty, devastated by the loss of her mother and the failure of her many attempts to establish a singing career. Yet still she allowed herself to hope and dream, when a lesser individual would have given up years ago.

 

The audition for
Britain’s Got Talent
was in January, although it was to be months before it hit the screens in May. Susan selected a gold dress to wear, which she had bought for a nephew’s wedding - ‘I bought it at a local shop,’ she said - and travelled by bus to Glasgow, where she was due to perform. ‘I was very nervous before I went on. I had a sandwich and then I went out there. The response from the judges really blew me away - it was a knockout. I was shocked by their reaction actually. My mouth was just wide open when they said all the nice things they did. It was the best feeling, being in front of that panel. I loved it.’

It was not, however, all plain sailing. Susan had to win her audience around, and for the first few minutes it was touch and go. ‘I walked on stage and was jittery,’ she told the
Daily Mail
. ‘One of the questions they asked was, “What singer do you model yourself on?” A smart alec from the audience said Elvis Presley. I said, “He’s dead but I’m not. Elaine Paige.” There was some sniggering, but then the music came on and I just did my song. It felt bloody fantastic. I think I shocked a few people.’

Of course Susan knew what was going to happen when she opened her mouth, whereas the rest of the audience did not. If you view the clip - the most downloaded clip of 2009 - it’s possible to see Susan smiling just a moment before she starts singing, and while she might have been feeling nervous, that smile is the smile of a woman who knows exactly what she’s about to do. She might not have had the opportunities, but she certainly had the talent, and at long last, a lifetime of trying to get her beautiful voice noticed was about to pay off.

We’ve already discussed the audience’s reaction to Susan’s audition, but what was not clear to many people was that Susan had to wait months before the rest of the world was let in on the big secret and that, despite feeling euphoric herself, she had no one to share those feelings with. Instead she returned home alone - she’d missed the last bus, so the production company paid for a taxi - where only Pebbles was waiting to keep her company. It was an oddly anticlimactic end to one of the biggest triumphs the world of showbusiness had ever seen.

‘I got home about midnight,’ she told the
Daily Mail
. ‘I was on such a high. It was like Celtic winning the cup. Anyway, I turned the key in the door and I walked in to silence. There was nobody to tell, so I gave my cat Pebbles a cuddle and fed her, went upstairs, hung my dress up and just went to bed. There was no big celebration. I just went home to bed. I do have the occasional glass of wine, but most of the time I’m teetotal. I prefer a half pint of lemonade.’

It’s details like this that are part of Susan’s enduring appeal. Unlike almost everyone else in the world of showbusiness, she is touchingly honest, with no agenda or desire to airbrush out the more painful aspects of her life and past. This little Scottish lady had just caused a sensation, and yet there she was, pottering around her house, feeding the cat and behaving as if nothing had happened. She might not even have realized it herself, of course, but Susan Boyle had just changed her life.

And so it proved five months later, when Susan’s triumph was unveiled to the world. Her first inclination was to pay tribute to Bridget: ‘I did it all for my late mum,’ she told the
Daily Star
. ‘I wanted to show her I could do something with my life. I was hoping she thought I did well. She was a woman in a million. She was unique and a lady. She taught me how to live a good life, how to behave in public and how to be a human being.’ And Bridget had brought up a talented and lovely daughter, too.

Susan watched the programme with her brother John, who knew immediately that this was no ordinary talent show moment - this was something new, the likes of which had never been seen before. The world went mad.

Susan however remained modest: ‘I thought there was room for improvement, particularly with the dress,’ she says in her usual down-to-earth fashion. ‘I love to belt out tunes in the shower because the sound is so good in the bathroom,’ she told the
Sunday Mirror
. ‘Music is like therapy to me. People accept me when I sing.’

It was also the first time she came to regret her remark about never having been kissed. ‘Oh, I was just joking around,’ she said. ‘It was just banter and it has been blown out of all proportion. All I wanted to say is that I am single at the moment but I keep waiting. I am not on the hunt. I am happy as I am. It’s personal.’

It should not be forgotten that while Susan might have learning difficulties, she also has her dignity, and she clearly didn’t appreciate the torrent of personal opinion and speculation about her love life that poured out in the wake of that remark.

 

As has been mentioned earlier, Susan smartened up almost immediately after the audition - just like Paul Potts, who celebrated his triumph with some extensive dental work - and began to learn how to deal with a world that, for her, had changed overnight. There had never been a phenomenon like this before: even Paul Potts’ moment of triumph had taken weeks to build up rather than happening overnight. And it could so easily not have happened at all. Susan wasn’t exactly taking her life into her own hands when she sang, but it had come pretty close.

‘I expected people to be a wee bit cynical,’ she said. ‘But I decided to win them round. That is what you do. They didn’t know what to expect. Before
Britain’s Got Talent
, I had never had a proper chance. It’s as simple as that. You just have to keep going and take one step at a time and one day you will make it. You just don’t give up.

‘I knew what they were thinking. I saw people laughing and I knew they were laughing at me. But I thought, Well, they’ll soon shut up when they hear me sing. And they did.’

Acres - no, forests - of newsprint were eaten up, examining the phenomenon of Susan Boyle, telling her story and attempting to analyse her appeal. There was the Cinderella aspect to it all, of course - although Cinderella was a young girl in her late teens, not a mature woman of forty-eight. Perhaps the real reason that Susan’s story connected with so many and made such a lasting impact is that she represents hope and the fact that it’s never too late to be what you might have been. After a genuinely difficult life, and a grief so debilitating it threatened to destroy her, Susan Boyle had triumphed over the nay sayers and doom mongers, the bullies and the school of thought that says if you’re to prosper in this world you must be young and beautiful. Susan had a dream and she had dared to pursue it. It’s all this that made such a formidable story, and that caused the whole world to take Susan to its heart.

And so it began. ‘This is all very new to me. I went to bed one night and woke up in the morning to a group of about thirty children outside chanting my name,’ she told one interviewer as she, too, struggled to understand what had happened. ‘That’s when it all began. John had said the night before, “Now you’ve seen yourself on television, so just stay in, because I think there’s going to be a hell of a reaction.” And, of course, there was.’