Authors: John McShane
The ‘bible’ of the left-wing intelligentsia, the
Guardian
, had its own view of the sensation. And they put into print both what many felt and raised points many others were to raise in the ensuing months. Writer Tanya Gold poised the question:
‘Is Susan Boyle ugly? Or are we? On Saturday night she stood on the stage in
Britain’s Got Talent
; small and rather chubby, with a squashed face, unruly teeth and unkempt hair. She wore a gold lace dress, which made her look like a piece of pork sitting on a doily…Why are we so shocked when “ugly” women can do things, rather than sitting at home weeping and wishing they were somebody else? Men are allowed to be ugly and talented. Alan Sugar looks like a burst bag of flour. Gordon Ramsay has a dried-up riverbed for a face. Justin Lee Collins looks like Cousin Itt from
The Addams Family
. Graham Norton is a baboon in mascara. I could go on. But a woman has to have the bright, empty beauty of a toy – or get off the screen. We don’t want to look at you. Except on the news, where you can weep because some awful personal tragedy has befallen you.’
After criticising the judges’ reactions, she continued, ‘And then Susan sang. She stood with her feet apart, like a Scottish Edith Piaf, and very slowly began to sing. It was wonderful.
‘The judges were astonished. They gasped, they
gaped, they clapped. They looked almost ashamed. I was briefly worried that Simon might stab himself with a pencil, and mutter, “Et tu, Piers, for we have wronged Susan in thinking that because she is a munter, she is entirely useless.”
‘How could they have misjudged her, they gesti-culated. But how could they not? No makeup? Bad teeth? Funny hair? Is she insane, this sad little Scottish spinster, beloved only of Pebbles the Cat?’
The
Guardian
piece continued: ‘I know what you will say. You will say that Paul Potts, the fat opera singer with the equally squashed face who won
Britain’s Got Talent
in 2007, had just as hard a time at his first audition. I looked it up on YouTube. He did not. “I wasn’t expecting that,” said Simon to Paul. “Neither was I,” said Amanda. “You have an incredible voice,” said Piers. And that was it. No laughter, or invitations to paranoia, or mocking wolf-whistles, or smirking, or derision.
‘We see this all the time in popular culture. Do you ever stare at the TV and wonder where the next generation of Judi Denches and Juliet Stevensons have gone? Have they fallen down a RADA wormhole? Yes. They’re not there, because they aren’t pretty enough to get airtime. This lust for homogeneity in female beauty means that when someone who doesn’t resemble a diagram in a plastic surgeon’s office steps up to the microphone, people fall about and treat us to despicable sub-John Gielgud gestures of amazement.
‘Susan will probably win
Britain’s Got Talent
. She will be the little munter that could sing, served up for the British public every Saturday night.’
The writer added: ‘Look! It’s “ugly”! It sings! And I know that we think that this will make us better people. But Susan Boyle will be the freakish exception that makes the rule. By raising this Susan up, we will forgive ourselves for grinding every other Susan into the dust. It will be a very partial and poisoned redemption. Because Britain’s Got Malice. Sing, Susan, sing – to an ugly crowd that doesn’t deserve you.’
An astonishingly accurate dissection of the events of the previous few days – or simply ‘a different take’ by the
Guardian
on what had happened? Even if the article had hit the nail on the head, or at the least touched on some dark feelings within many people, nothing could be done to stop the rollercoaster that was SuBo.
The
Daily Mirror
adopted a similar, if somewhat more punchy, approach:
‘Just for a moment, let’s switch the sound off. Let’s not listen to Susan Boyle’s glorious, heavenly voice. Let’s just contemplate her friendly face, her cheeky hip wiggle, the twinkle in her eye.
‘Even before she opened her mouth and let that beautiful sound pour out, Susan looked a darn sight more fun than the frozen-faced freaks who were judging her. Apparently Simon Cowell and Amanda Holden were surprised. How could anyone tell? What the
Britain’s Got
Talent
judges were shocked by wasn’t Susan’s amazing musical gift. They were shocked by her appearance.
‘Were you? Me neither. She just looked like a straightforwardly nice woman to me. A bit of a laugh, a pillar of her community, a decent person who looks after others for no other reason than she thinks it’s right. Yet she was presented as a hopeless case. Look at her! A 47year-old unemployed cat owner who wouldn’t know fashion if it slapped her on the Hermès Birkin. She’s a stranger to tweezers. She’s “never been kissed”.’
Again pointing out how different it is for women, the article went on to say: ‘How dare such an unsexy female even get up on stage! It’s an outrage! If she hadn’t sung so wonderfully, who knows what would have happened? Susan might have been lynched. Or worse, stripped to her underwear and sent straight to Gok Wan.
‘It’s different for men. Think of Elton John, Barry Manilow, Meatloaf, Van Morrison, Phil Collins, Jimmy Ruddy Nail… even Michael Jackson. No one ever looked at them and thought, “There’s no way that man can sing. He’s not good-looking enough, the loser. Banish him!” But no woman gets to perform publicly unless she looks like Mariah Carey. If you’re a female singer, you are required by showbiz law to appear sexy at all times.’
It wasn’t just the national newspapers who had decided that there should be virtually no limit to their coverage of Susan; the provincial press too was simultaneously
enthusiastically raving about her performance and questioning just why it had had such an impact.
‘When Susan Boyle walked onto the stage at the
Britain’s Got Talent
auditions, she was the complete antithesis of our image-obsessed world. Dressed in a dodgy gold dress, with bushy eyebrows and her greying hair longing to be styled and coloured, first impressions meant we all expected her to fail miserably,’ said Wales’
Western Mail
.
‘After all, it wasn’t a surprise when the 47-year-old announced she was single, living at home with only a pet cat for company or that she’d never been married, never even been kissed. It wasn’t really a surprise when she waffled on to Simon Cowell about where she lived, how old she was or even when she started, rather embarrassingly, nervously gyrating her hips. The looks from the audience and judges alike summed up exactly what we were all feeling at home – this woman may want to be a professional singer like Elaine Paige, but she didn’t stand a chance, did she? After all, she just didn’t look right so what chance would she have against the bevy of half-dressed beauties looking to charm the judges for the chance to perform at the Royal Variety Performance. But Ms Boyle – even her name isn’t remotely showbiz or sexy – had a gigantic surprise up her rather old-fashioned shaped sleeve.
‘And when she belted out “I Dreamed A Dream” from
Les Misérables
, we were all left gobsmacked.’
Much nearer to home, the
Evening Times
in Edinburgh said: ‘Let’s hear it for the misfits: a select band of people at least half a step out of synch with the rest of the world who with every word, deed and thought dare to be different. Best of all, they are as natural in quirks and foibles as the rest of humanity is not.
‘People like Susan Boyle, who bravely took to a stage and was ready to be mocked and patronised by some pretty shallow, sharp-minded showbiz cookies backed by an audience ready for a lynching.
‘At first it looked as if yet another lamb was being led to the slaughter: Simon Cowell rolled his eyes, Piers Morgan smirked and Amanda Holden set her face in pre-performance sympathy-mode. As the camera panned over the audience, the only things missing were knitting needles and a guillotine.
‘Then the gloriously plain and perky Miss Boyle opened her mouth and the rest is, as the sheep might say, history.’
The article, not one that favoured
Britain’s Got Talent
as a show, continued: ‘It is marshmallow media for the unthinking – until the likes of Susan Boyle comes along and shatters the pre-packaged myth of good looks, sophisticated charm, wit and style. Just an ordinary, wee, middle-aged, never-been-kissed spinster in a baggy dress with a twinkle in her eye and a singing voice that could shatter glass and splinter pigeonholes.
‘By the time she makes her next appearance I am in no doubt the style gurus will have set to work: the frizzy
bob will have been softened, there will be a gown and girders to even out the lumps and bumps.
‘What won’t change is her aura of danger and anarchy: the spirit of individualism that sets Susan Boyle and her like outside of the herd.’
The newspaper added: ‘If anything, Miss Boyle – I refuse to say Ms because Miss was made for her – is a parable of our blighted, anxiety-ridden, narrow-minded times…it is also where Susan Boyle’s hidden talent lies. Not in a glorious voice singing its way from a brown paper bag…but to shock herded humanity out of complacency, conceit and self-deception.’
Newspapers and television and radio stations around the world rely for a vast amount of their information on agency reports; the wire services, as they were once referred to. The unsung heroes of the newsgathering process, they disseminate information locally, nationally and internationally. One of the leading agencies is the Associated Press, and in the middle of the crazy week that ensued after Susan’s Saturday night performance they sent out several stories, one of which was headlined ‘Singing “spinster” strikes chord in talent contest’.
Datelined ‘Blackburn, Scotland’, it said: ‘Susan Boyle lives alone in a row house with her cat Pebbles, a drab existence in one of Scotland’s poorest regions. She cared for her widowed mother for years, never married and sang in church and at karaoke nights at the pub. Neighbours knew she could sing, and now – what with
You Tube, Twitter and countless blog postings – just about everyone else does, too… When she mounted the stage for Saturday’s broadcast, her frizzy grey-tinged hair curling wildly and a gold lace dress clinging unflatteringly to her chubby frame, Boyle looked the antithesis of the American idols Simon Cowell normally anoints. She was greeted with giggles from the audience and eye rolls from the notoriously acerbic Cowell. The audience chuckled in embarrassment as she wiggled her hips awkwardly.
‘Then she opened her mouth… her soaring voice drew startled looks and then delighted smiles from Cowell and the other judges. The audience leapt to its feet to applaud. More than 11 million people watched Saturday’s show, but Boyle’s instant success is due as much to new media as to the power of television, with a clip of her performance posted on YouTube by the show’s producers drawing nearly 13 million views. Not to mention the skilful packaging of the segment, a mini-opera of underdog triumph.’
The report added: ‘Boyle herself seems ill at ease with her newfound fame. At her modest, government-subsidised home on Thursday, she seemed more at ease making tea for visiting TV crews than answering questions about her life. She did mug for the cameras, however, crooning into a hairbrush.
“‘It has been surreal for me,” Boyle told the AP. “I didn’t realize this would be the reaction, I just went on stage and got on with it.”
“‘She is often taunted by local kids. They think she’s an oddball, but she’s a simple soul with genuine warmth,” a neighbour was quoted as saying. “Not many people these days are devoutly religious or would spend their time devoted to their parents to the point they’d find themselves a spinster.”
‘Susan told the agency, “I can hardly remember what happened on the night as I had my eyes closed most of the time. It really didn’t dawn on me what was happening.”’
Perhaps the most famous news agency of all is Reuters, the organisation founded in the middle of the 19th century and synonymous with the dissemination of news about major world events.
So how could they not write about Susan?
The message they circulated to the world in the aftermath of her appearance was: ‘A middle aged Scottish spinster with untamed hair and a plain-spoken manner has captivated millions of music lovers and confounded celebrity watchers with her rise to fame after appearing on a British TV talent show.
‘Susan Boyle, at 47, became one of the world’s hottest celebrities virtually overnight after her rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” on
Britain’s Got Talent
this month.
‘She has appeared on
Larry King Live
in the United States and in countless newspaper and internet articles. The clip of her song has been viewed around 50 million times on website YouTube.
‘But while most people see her story as a fairytale,
some say it casts an unflattering light on the public and its preconceived notions about beauty and fame. They argue that the reason Boyle, who lives alone with her ct, became the instant star she has was because she did not look or behave like a “typical” celebrity.’
That even an organisation as prestigious as Reuters should see fit to give Susan the accolade of a feature about her life and television debut is a mark of how far she had come in so short a time. And nowhere had that impact been greater than in America.
The ‘story had become the story’, in newspaper parlance. In other words, the amount of column inches and air space that Susan was generating was now being mentioned as newsworthy in its own right.
The
Independent
was one of the first to note the fascination in America with the tiny lady from West Lothian.
‘It didn’t take long. Just days after Susan Boyle caused a sensation on
Britain’s Got Talent
she has conquered another media market far away from her home in Blackburn, Scotland. She may not be in Beatles territory quite yet, but America is going nuts for the lady.’ Under the headline ‘Just Who Is The Singer Susan Boyle?’ the paper went on to record the interest of others.
‘The
San Francisco Chronicle
: “Unless you live under a rock, you know about the Scottish woman who has taken the industrialised world by storm. CBS scored biggest. There on its
Early Show
yesterday was a
bemused-looking Ms Boyle for a live satellite interview from her front room. Veteran London correspondent Mark Phillips had been dispatched to her local pub to gauge her popularity among the punters – they love her.