Authors: John McShane
The
Detroit Free Press
, based in the ‘motor city’, said: ‘A well-known ugly duckling is getting some help becoming a swan. Susan Boyle became an international sensation when her recent appearance on
Britain’s Got Talent
hit YouTube. The most polite term applied to her appearance was “unconventional”, so it was hardly surprising that she emerged with a new look Friday.
‘Her once grey hair is now brown and her thick eyebrows are considerably thinner. The frock she wore for her audition was replaced Friday with a more flattering ensemble that included a leather jacket.
‘A prominent British publicist, Max Clifford, isn’t a fan of the new Boyle. “Keep her as natural as possible for as long as possible,” he says. “She has to make sure that the person people all around the world fell in love with remains the same.”’
A Canadian paper had the headline, ‘Whether she
should have or shouldn’t have, she did’, and everyone immediately knew who they were talking about. ‘Susan Boyle has dyed and cut her frizzy, greying locks and thinned her famous bushy eyebrows, a US$57 sprucing up that has become huge news in Britain.
‘On Wednesday, with the blinds pulled down at the Miss Toner salon to give the unlikely global celebrity a little privacy, Boyle got a haircut, semi-permanent colour rinse and eyebrow shaping, according to a receptionist at the Whitburn, Scotland, salon.
‘Since she appeared April 11 on the television show
Britain’s Got Talent
, her decidedly unglamorous looks have become a subject of global debate. Many of her fans urged her not to let stylists change her, while others advised her to pay more attention to her appearance.
‘The
Sun
, the bestselling British tabloid, had dubbed her “Hairy Angel” but yesterday referred to her as “Brunette’s Got Talent.”’
“‘I assure you it’s not a major makeover,” her brother John Boyle said. “She is still the same Susan.” Boyle’s show-stopping success has sparked a worldwide argument about the nature of beauty and celebrity. Her fans call her a refreshing change from the parade of airbrushed celebrities on the airwaves. Others have said that there’s nothing wrong with maximising your looks, and that Boyle really ought to let the stylists release her inner princess. Online sites have run surveys and blogs about whether she should get a makeover.
DailyMakeover.com said 75 per cent said “yes” and that it would not “detract from who she is.” Some online commentators had speculated that the talent show host Simon Cowell might forbid a makeover because it could kill the golden goose; the unvarnished Boyle is the biggest thing ever to happen to his television show.’
The
Globe and Mail
, often described as Canada’s newspaper of record, commented:
‘Last week, Susan Boyle got a bit of a makeover, and it sent some people around the bend. The breakout star of
Britain’s Got Talent
, familiar to hundreds of millions of tissue-clutching fans thanks to that YouTube clip, has had a bit of fluffing. When she first appeared on the audition phase of the show a month ago, it was clear from Simon Cowell’s look of disdain and Piers Morgan’s wrinkled nose that here was an alien specimen: a 47-year-old woman in a mother-of-the-bride dress, with upper arms that swayed gently in the breeze, wearing not a stitch of makeup. Worse, perhaps, Boyle was a woman of hair. She was not, as women are supposed to be, as smooth as a Barbie fresh from the Mattel factory.
‘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
B
BC 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.