Emma Cowing: Now life has killed the dream Susan dreamed

Published on Monday 1 June 2009 20:47

SIX WEEKS ago, as the global multi-media hype around Susan Boyle began to reach hysterical proportions, I sat in the darkened living room of her Blackburn home and attempted to interview her. It was not easy.

She was nervous and uncomfortable and occasionally got her words mixed up. She had been given stock phrases to repeat such as "you'll have to keep watching" and "I haven't anything further to add", and they tripped out uneasily in her sturdy Blackburn accent.

Sometimes her answers were less than a sentence, or greeted with a mere shake of the head. Watching the proceedings like a hawk was a young male production company employee from London, who had been sent by Talkback Thames to live in her house, fend off autograph-hunters, and negotiate with the photographers and reporters camped outside her home.

I felt at the time, and still feel now, that his presence was a gross error of judgment on the part of a TV company which had little idea of the nature of the woman they were duty bound to protect from an insatiable world media. Boyle, at 48, had rarely travelled outside Blackburn. Her life, until that fateful day on 11 April when ITV broadcast the episode of Britain's Got Talent in which she turned round a cynical, baying audience and judging panel by belting out I Dreamed A Dream from Les Miserables, was contained within a tiny radius. There was the safety of her council house, trips to the local for a lemonade, the weekly karaoke night, and the occasional smoked sausage supper. Having never left home, she lived with her mother until she died two years ago, and had lived alone since – a self-confessed virgin who had "never been kissed".

To ensconce a young man in her house and have him take charge of her life must have been incredibly confusing, invasive and alien for her – at a time that was already incredibly confusing, invasive and alien for someone starved of oxygen at birth, who has been a target of bullying all her life, and has a limited understanding of the wider world. They could, I felt as I left her house, at least have sent a woman.

Piers Morgan, on GMTV yesterday, said the attention Boyle received had been "crazy" and "nobody could have predicted it". Well, up to a point Piers. Yes, the reaction to her performance was astounding and unprecedented. Yes, it was "crazy", and took many by surprise. But such remarks are not only naive, they belie belief.

Having mercilessly traded on her unworldliness during her audition clip, airing the comment that she had "never been kissed" and setting her appearance on stage to demeaning, plodding circus music, the makers of Britain's Got Talent knew exactly what they were doing. This was a story, a plotline in the soap opera every reality TV programme aspires to become. Leaking the tale to the press the day before the show aired, the spin was "hairy virgin shocks evil Simon Cowell". Perhaps "humiliated brain-damaged woman inspires exploitation for financial gain" doesn't have quite the same fairytale ring to it.

Watch that original clip, the one filmed before any of the hype had taken hold, and you will see a very different Susan Boyle from the woman who sang in the final. She is vibrant and warm. She has an energy around her that is partly about nerves, and partly about the excitement of the situation. She knows she can sing, and she knows she is about to knock them off their feet.

In the second, we see a pale, nervous woman with huge bags under her eyes. She looks terrified, someone who has lost all self-confidence. After a week of knock-her-down stories in the press, she has been sapped of self-belief and has had enough. Last Wednesday, "surrounded by people she doesn't really know" according to brother Gerry, she had wanted to quit. She was talked round, probably by executives from the show and Sony BMG, who have signed her up and are eyeing tours, albums and other quick turnaround schemes that will likely not allow her to return home to Blackburn for some time. Four days later, following her defeat, she was in the Priory.

Reality TV has been building up to a problem like this. Insta-celebs – straight out of the packet, just add three minutes of Saturday primetime TV – have a particular vulnerability that was always going to cause serious mental pressure. Boyle arrived on the scene soon after the death of Jade Goody, another underprivileged woman constantly built up and knocked down by tabloid media. After her funeral, a gap was created. Boyle appears to have filled that hole.

But we cannot just blame the tabloids. The world of blogging, YouTube and endless commentary on news sites has contributed much to Boyle's level of fame, and much to her downfall. The media world moves so fast that anything can go global within minutes, and an opinion on it, voiced behind the anonymous protection of a computer screen, is de rigeur.

What so many of us have forgotten in all this – and I don't just mean those responsible for creating the hype around her in the first place but every one of us who has watched the clip or commented on a message board – is that Boyle is not just an amusing Twitter, a link on a Facebook page, or so many pixels on a screen. She is a fragile human being who has become a victim of the 21st-century obsession with disposable celebrity and is now paying a very high price for other people's insatiable curiosity – all because she wanted to sing a song on a talent show. Sorry, Susan.