Susan Boyle

[LolaSvelt]

I guess it would appropriate for her to have a thread!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAuV8X6Sctw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

 

[tigerrouge]

A new interview with her (dailymail.co.uk

'Fame was like a steam-roller it flattened me': Susan Boyle on that breakdown – and why she’s determined it won’t happen again

07th November 2009

Within minutes of us meeting, Susan Boyle begins badgering me about Britain's Got Talent judge Piers Morgan. Only she doesn't call him Piers, she calls him Piersy Baby. Is he a friend? Do I know him? When I tell her I do, she launches into the Susan Boyle Wiggle and, with a twinkle in her eye, throws herself on the sofa. 'Ask me whatever you want,' she says. Okay, do you really have a crush on Piers?

'You've got to admit he is dead handsome,' she says, going all starry-eyed. Umm, well… Susan, remember, is 48 and single; the never-been-kissed church volunteer who lived alone with her cat in Blackburn, West Lothian, before her jaw-dropping rendition of I Dreamed A Dream on Britain's Got Talent.

Within a few short days, she became a global internet sensation, but then the pressure seemed to prove too much for her. Susan checked herself into the Priory clinic in north London, sparking a media furore about reality TV 'exploitation' and claims of a life wrecked by transient fame.

Susan, you see, had a difficult birth that resulted in a lack of oxygen to the brain and mild learning difficulties. So has she been exploited? Well, the Susan I meet today certainly doesn't seem particularly wrecked, nor her fame fleeting. Her debut album I Dreamed A Dream, topped Amazon's bestseller list, where it could be pre-ordered, three months before its release date on 23 November.

She looks startlingly different, having lost a few stone and started waxing. She was , remember, cruelly dubbed The Hairy Angel. 'I was fed up with being called that,' she says. 'I didn't know what I looked like on television until I saw myself on Britain's Got Talent.

‘The whole thing got out of control – but I put myself there’

I saw this wee wifey with the mad hairdo and the bushy eyebrows and said, "Hmmm, not really telegenic." So, I decided to spruce myself up a bit. When I look in the mirror now, I see this sophisticated lady. I'm still a bit like that wee wifey inside, but more refined in some ways. I think any woman would have done the same. Would you want to look like the Hairy Angel? I don't think so.'

And this is the thing about Susan: she is an astonishingly forthright woman; the sort who cuts to the chase with candour. This is the first in-depth interview Susan has given, and she is determined to be absolutely honest. 'This is the last time I will mention the Priory,' she says.

'Everything had built up and I was exhausted. You have to understand, my life ceased to be normal when Britain's Got Talent went live. There were a lot of press people outside my door, a lot of television people, a lot of people who wanted a piece of me. I thought, "God, what's happening here. I'm a reasonable singer, but I never expected that."'

Indeed, the interest in Susan was phenomenal. 'It got to the stage where I couldn't even go outside because the media – American television crews too – surrounded the house.

'I had to draw my blinds, and even after that they started hammering on my door. I didn't have any security then – it was just me and one of the BGT production team, who had been sent up to stay nearby for me. I was quite frightened. I felt very vulnerable, because I was living on my own.

'There were phone calls 24 hours a day. They kept me awake for three weeks, until I changed my number. It was just constant. I don't know anybody else from a talent show who got that. I don't think Paul Potts [the BTG winner in 2007] did. It was like being inside a giant pressure cooker, where the lid bubbles up and bubbles up and soon the pressure cooker goes.'

Following the semi-finals, the pressure upon Susan intensified. 'It was totally out of control, like a steamroller. It just got bigger and bigger and bigger, until eventually it can flatten you.'

By the night of the final, Susan was in a real state. 'Simon [Cowell] sent for me and asked if I was still sure I wanted to sing that night. Of course I wanted to – it's what I'd waited my whole life for. There was nothing going to stop me stepping out on stage the night of the final.' He said, "Okay, then, in that case… Do you remember what you said at the audition? You said you'd make the place rock. Well, go out there and make it rock."'

Susan, of course, did deliver the goods, but came second. She says, 'I just went through to the dressing room and I don't know what was wrong,' she says. 'I couldn't even see properly. I hadn't eaten properly for about a week, hadn't slept properly. It was like looking at everything through a glass, and the feeling was one of extreme exhaustion that manifested itself in firing off at everyone.

'It was like the dream had gone pop – a baby that's had the sweeties taken away. I was just being childish. I so desperately wanted to make a record. I wanted to prove myself a bit more, but maybe I was pushing myself a bit too hard. I felt I'd got so close. I don't remember much else. I just know someone sent for an ambulance and I went to the Priory. I needed to sleep. I was too tired to even think straight. I'm much stronger now, though.'

She looks it, too, and there's little doubt that she's thoroughly enjoying herself. 'I know people have said, "How can you allow someone to pass the audition process when they're not able to deal with it?" But there are lots of people with hidden disabilities who do auditions. I don't think they should be discouraged. My audition was only three minutes long for goodness sake!

'A lot of the difficulties I had were purely emotional. I couldn't handle things at that particular time, because I was new to it all. The whole thing just got out of control. It's never happened like that to anyone before and Britain's Got Talent can't take responsibility for that. When you put yourself in that arena, there are always going to be people who want to know more about you – but it's you who put yourself there. I can turn my disability now into ability. I've got a great deal more ability than people give me credit for.'

Susan was born the youngest of nine children and grew up in the former mining village of Blackburn in Scotland, in a terrace house that remains her home today. 'I was bullied quite a lot as a child. They used to call me Sambo, because I had black curly hair, and Simple Susie. At school, I felt very frustrated, very lonely – people didn't want to sit next to me in class. I was often bawling my eyes out and it does tend to chip away at your personality.'

Home, she says, was her sanctuary. As a little girl she played with dolls, giving them names and different characters. 'That was my wee family,' she says. 'I had my own way of playing. They were my friends. When I got older, all that changed to music. Music was very much an escape, because I'd go to my bedroom and nobody could taunt me.'

Susan left school with two O-levels in history and English, not knowing quite what she'd do. Jobs were scarce in her village in the 1980s, so she worked for six months in a canteen kitchen, before attending night school and later a local university to qualify for a job in the voluntary sector. A devout Catholic, she was also a volunteer at her local church, Our Lady of Lourdes, where she'd entertain the elderly and disabled with her astonishing voice, continuing to harbour her dreams of singing professionally.

‘I wasn’t well at all. I’d got so close. It was like the dream had gone pop’

There was a boyfriend, briefly. 'I had a boyfriend, John, who worked in an office. He asked me to marry him after seven weeks, although we'd only ever had a peck on the cheek, but he eventually got cold feet. It made me sad, in a way. It makes you feel unattractive, you feel that life is passing you by. But I thought, "Maybe there's something for me later." I was always optimistic.'

Then, in 1999, her father, Patrick, died at the age of 80. He'd been suffering with Alzheimer's, respiratory problems and cancer. 'It was just old age,' says Susan. 'But that was the first time I'd ever encountered bereavement.

'There was no change in my family until then. I remember when he was dying and everyone had gone home, I went over to him. He was just lying in front of me. I kissed his hair and stroked his forehead, I said goodbye to him. At a time like that you can either be strong or go to pieces. I'd lost a father, but my mother had lost a lifelong partner. They were married in 1936 and had never been apart. She was devastated.'

Susan's mother, Bridget, became increasingly dependent upon her over the following years, until her death two years ago, at the age of 91. They were enormously close. 'It was old age, a natural breakdown of her system,' says Susan.

'I was her main carer for three or four years prior to her death. In February 2007 she was taken into hospital suffering from dehydration. Obviously she was dying. She wasn't aware of her surroundings. She looked completely different. I couldn't imagine that shell of a woman was my mother. She was a beautiful person, very warm and kind and very articulate.

'Before she got very ill, she began putting money aside for me, and got nice carpets for the house and stuff like that. I'd ask her what she was buying it for and she said, "Susan, I'm not going to be with you much longer. I'm getting old." I still couldn't follow her. It wasn't until she went that it sunk in.

'It's a very unusual experience, watching someone you love go. When people die, they just go to sleep. I held her hand and, a few minutes before she went, I don't know what it was, but she smiled at something she saw. I don't know whether it was Our Lady or my dad, but, whoever it was, it was as if she was saying, "It's all right." She was in bliss, in a kind of limbo, a wee world of her own.' Susan pauses. 'I can talk about it now, but I couldn't have done a year or so ago. I'd have been too emotional.'

 

[tigerrouge]

The interview continued (same source

Susan was emotionally bereft following her mother's death. 'I was very lonely and very upset. There was a kind of numbness to begin with, because you don't know what's happening, but then it hit me like a ton of bricks. My health went down.

'I had panic attacks and felt I couldn't cope. I didn't eat or sleep properly. I'd had everything done for me. But the rest of my family helped pull me through. I think I still struggle with my independence a bit, because I depended on my mother so much – although I have a lot more help nowadays.

'When I walk into the house now, I'm lonely. But this is where my faith comes in. Her physical presence is no longer here, but her spirit is. She's still very much a part of me – she's in my heart. To hang on to her memory is good, in a way, but, in another way, it's not so good, because you don't get on with your own life, and my mother wouldn't have wanted that.'

Susan says that for the first couple of weeks following her mother's death, she didn't play a lot of music. 'That's when the house was silent for a while,' she says. 'Then I began to listen to the radio again, and came across Britain's Got Talent on the TV and the wee boy called Piers Morgan. I thought, "Hmm, nice. I like him." I used to put the show on to see him, then I began to wonder what would happen if I wrote off for an audition.'

And so, on 21 January, Susan put on the gold dress she'd bought for her nephew's wedding a few months earlier, a headscarf and coat, and made her way by bus to the SECC Theatre in Glasgow and the BGT auditions.

'I walked on stage and was jittery,' she says. '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.'

That night, Susan missed her bus home, so was provided with a taxi by the BGT production staff. 'I got home about midnight,' she says. 'I was on such a high. It was like Celtic winning the cup. Anyway, I turned the key in the door and I walked into 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.'

A few months later, Susan was sitting with her older brother, John, in that same terraced house when her audition was broadcast on television. She came downstairs the following morning to find a crowd of teenagers screaming at her door.

'That's when it all began,' she says. '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.'

Indeed, there have been so many advance orders for Susan's album that it is already outselling Whitney Houston's comeback album, and a recent appearance on America's Got Talent saw viewing figures for the show soar by around five million.

I wonder what she believes is her appeal to so many. 'I suppose it's a bit of a Cinderella story isn't it,' she says. And, like all good fairy tales, this one has a happy ending, too.

Susan’s debut album, I Dreamed A Dream, is released on 23 November. I Dreamed A Dream, a Susan Boyle special, will be screened on ITV1 in December.