Susan Boyle: The impossible dream

Published on Saturday 21 November 2009 20:00

You're whipped up in a tornado then someone pops up and says: 'here's the yellow brick road my dear, just follow it'

SUSAN Boyle perched on a chair in her dressing room, watching her reflection in the mirror as the final touches to her hair and make-up were made. It was September and Boyle was backstage at a Los Angeles TV studio to record her cover of the Rolling Stones' Wild Horses for the final episode of America's Got Talent.

This performance was a big deal. It was Boyle's US debut, in front of a TV audience of almost 15 million, and meticulously designed to launch her stateside career with a glittering bang. Susan, America would be told, was living the dream.

But there was a problem: Boyle was wracked with nerves. Piers Morgan – one of the show's judges – had already been in to see her and found her "incredibly nervous", and Sharon Osbourne, wife of Ozzy and another America's Got Talent judge, was sent in to "calm her down".

According to Osbourne, "I just looked her in the eye and said, 'Susan, you're a winner, not a loser, and you're a fighter like me, so get out there and show them all what you can do.'" Moments later, Boyle was on stage, looking calm, polished, and belting out her song to a standing ovation.

Welcome to Susan Boyle's new life. Gone are the untamed eyebrows, the "hairy angel" monikers, and the teenagers in the West Lothian village of Blackburn who taunted her with shouts of "Simple Susan" when she popped out of her council terrace to pick up a sausage supper. Now, American TV networks will drop a speech by Barack Obama on healthcare reform in favour of her singing live. If she wants to pose for a photograph, Harper's Bazaar magazine will make its top stylists and a designer wardrobe available to her. And if she suffers from nerves, Sharon Osbourne will soothe her fevered brow.

Tomorrow, another chapter in the remarkable story of Susan Boyle opens with the launch of I Dreamed A Dream, an album which has already become the most pre-ordered CD ever produced. Boyle will, again, be thrust centre-stage, with a string of appearances across Britain and the US which kicked off with her pre-recorded performance on tonight's The X Factor, on STV.

Today, she will fly to the US, and tomorrow she will appear on the highly regarded early-morning The Today Show. For a woman who just five months ago was taken to the Priory clinic in an ambulance after apparently collapsing with exhaustion amid rumours of a mental breakdown, it is a hectic schedule and an astonishing turn-around.

Those who know her say Boyle is coping. "She is adjusting very well to the circumstances of her fame," says Fred O'Neill, her former singing teacher and friend. "I don't remember her ever being a nervous performer but I think that it's a different set of circumstances and she will cope given time. I feel that she's very happy in her life so I'm sure that will come through."

Experts in the field, however, are not so sure. "She has not just got a new job but a whole new way of life," says Honey Langcaster-James, a consultant psychologist who specialises in treating celebrities who struggle with fame. "You can no longer walk down the road without people pointing and talking about you and the paparazzi photographing your every move. People shouldn't underestimate the incredible pressure that puts somebody under."

Will Boyle cope with the extra pressure and incessant media attention that a hit album will bring? Will I Dreamed A Dream be the end of the beginning of a stellar career en route to a multi-million-pound fortune or the peak of Boyle's unlikely climb to global fame.

IT IS just eight months since Boyle's life was turned upside down when she appeared, awkward and bumbling, in that now infamous audition for Britain's Got Talent. What could have been a blink and you'll miss it moment of Saturday night telly has now become the most downloaded YouTube clip in history, viewed over 300 million times. In the aftermath Boyle found herself besieged, with photographers permanently camped outside her house in Blackburn and journalists across the globe from Oprah Winfrey to Larry King clamouring to interview her.

For the 48-year-old self-proclaimed virgin and church worker with a learning disability, who had lived with and cared for her mother until her death in 2007, it was a radical and overwhelming change. When Boyle failed to win the final of Britain's Got Talent after a shaky performance and inappropriate behaviour on stage – flashing her legs at Simon Cowell – it all became too much. Following an alleged collapse at her London hotel she was rushed to the Priory to be treated for exhaustion.

Whatever happened to Boyle during those five days in the Priory, it clearly prompted a radical rethink by her management team on how to look after the singer. In the intervening five months, she has rarely been seen in public. Instead, there have been carefully managed appearances, such as the Harper's Bazaar photoshoot, which cleverly re-cast Boyle as a well-dressed, well-coiffed, middle-aged woman, and a heavily edited interview for the Today Show in which she met her singing idol, Elaine Paige.

Then there was the America's Got Talent performance which was hyped endlessly on US TV and featured the singer under a single spotlight as a video introduction trumpeted "one voice; one incredible story; one woman who inspired the world to never give up on their dreams". Boyle herself was filmed, swathed in pearls and sitting by a cosy fireside, talking about being "more able to take part in the dream" and no longer being "a frightened wee lassie". The footage was intercut with images of her flying over Loch Lomond in a seaplane and visiting church.

"This is a PR machine going to work and constructing a fantasy around her," says Ellis Cashmore, author of Celebrity Culture. "The Americans are very good at that. If you look at someone like Michael Jordan, everything about him was manufactured, nothing was left to chance, and the whole myth of Michael Jordan was constructed by his manager, his media people and so on.

"It looks as if we are witnessing the fabrication of a new Susan Boyle, who is different from the flesh and blood version. The ordinary person we knew a few months ago is now owned by the media."

If it is a fabrication, it is one with American upholstery. The notion of "the dream", words that incidentally also crop up in the title of her album, are constantly mentioned in publicity materials.

"The idea of the dream is very much part of American culture," says Cashmore. "It's almost as if it's their duty to be successful in America. I didn't get the impression that in the UK she talked in terms of a dream – in fact that was what was so untypical of her, she wasn't this driven person."

Then there is her Roman Catholic faith, another element likely to play well with conservative middle America. In a video on the singer's website, she is described as "a deeply religious and private woman". Susan is filmed walking into a church, kneeling before a statue of the Virgin Mary, and praying towards a sea of candles.

The trappings of fame have arrived at express speed. Boyle is understood to now have an entourage of five who travel everywhere with her, including a press officer, two bodyguards, a "project manager", and a PA named Julia whom, it is believed, also looks after Boyle's mental wellbeing. Cowell is said to still be in close contact and Boyle lives, most of the time, with her cat Pebbles in a flat in London's Kensington.

O'Neill says she's happy with the way her new life is panning out. "She comes and goes whenever she likes at home (in West Lothian] with no problems. She has time to live a normal life and the stresses are off her. She sounds very happy with life."

Yet it was only in the run-up to tonight's TV appearance that she was at long last spotted again in her home town in what seemed a carefully-choreographed public appearance to stress her "normality".

Ralph Bell, Blackburn Community Centre co-ordinator and organiser of the Susan Boyle parties during Britain's Got Talent, said there would be no celebrations taking place locally for the launch of the album. "We haven't really seen her," he said.

Cashmore says it's easy to understand how Boyle, or indeed anyone else, might succumb to the lure of a home in London and the chance to break America – particularly when her debut album is expected to be the year's biggest seller. "Somebody comes along and says 'look Susan, we know you're an ordinary lass but you've got a chance of making $10 million in the next two years'. It's an almost irresistible force. But the problem is, then they'll say, 'all you've got to do is what we tell you to do. If we want you to appear on Jay Leno's show you do it. If we think you've got to give a press conference, then you will, and we'll brief you on everything you say and tell you how to answer every question'."

Cameron Stout, the level-headed Orcadian who won Big Brother in 2003 and understands the pressures of becoming an overnight celebrity, said: "That sort of stuff can really, really freak you out. You've got to be a particular type of person to be able to handle it. You're thrust into a way of doing things that is very unusual and alien, and it's not easy to cope with."

While the plus side of Boyle's fame must certainly be wonderful, Boyle must wonder sometimes if the whole experience is, in fact, just a temporary diversion from her life.

"It must be like being Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz," remarks Cashmore. "You're whipped up in a tornado and dumped down somewhere wondering, where am I? Then someone pops up and says to you: 'here's the yellow brick road my dear, just follow it'."

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