April 1, 2011. Copyright 2011, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Scottish spinster who went global via television talent show, Susan Boyle turns 50
By Susan Shepherd

LONDON, April 1, Graphic News:  Two years ago, few people outside the unremarkable former mining town of Blackburn in the Scottish lowlands had ever heard of Susan Boyle. She sang in the church choir, took part in karaoke nights in local pubs and performed hits from West End musicals in front of the mirror in her modest council house, to an audience of one: her pet cat, Pebbles. The youngest of 10 children born to Irish immigrants from County Donegal, she had been alone since the death in 2007 of her 91-year-old mother, Bridget, was unemployed and had little money. It had been 10 years since she had blown her savings on a professionally recorded demo, which she had sent to various local radio stations and record producers, and 14 years since she had auditioned, unsuccessfully, for British TV host Michael Barrymore's My Kind of People, in a shopping centre in East Kilbride. She was a stout, unmarried, middle-aged woman -- her singing teacher, Fred O'Neil, had already seen her abandon an attempt to get on The X Factor, because of her looks -- when the Britain's Got Talent auditions came to Glasgow and Susan Boyle decided to give it one last go.

Today, her many credits include having the fastest-selling debut album in the history of the charts; having an album at the number one slot in both the UK and the U.S. charts twice in the same year -- a feat matched only by the Beatles and the Monkees and never before by a female artist; and being viewed over 400 million times on the internet channel, YouTube, The woman once called "Susie Simple" by classmates at school who bullied her over her learning difficulties -- she was slightly brain damaged at birth -- has been a guest of TV giants Oprah Winfrey and Larry King, has sung to audiences of thousands -- including pilgrims awaiting the Pope at Bellahouston Park in Glasgow last September -- and performed a duet with her idol, Elaine Paige, the star she told a sceptical Simon Cowell she hoped to emulate, during that first fateful audition interview in April 2009. A biopic is planned amid reports that Fatal Attraction actress Glenn Close is to play the part of this unlikeliest of superstars, whose personal fortune was put at £11 million (pounds) in December 2010.
 
All this has come Boyle's way despite the fact that she didn't actually win that 2009 season final, being beaten on the night by a street dance troupe whose star is now on the wane. Her spectacular rise faltered momentarily when she was admitted to the world-famous London Priory clinic immediately after the show, suffering from nervous exhaustion, a plot twist that only served to increase her fan base, with high-profile wellwishers including then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Critics of the talent show format point to Boyle's alleged exploitation by Cowell, her mentor Piers Morgan and the tabloid press, who mercilessly nicknamed her SuBo, or the Hairy Angel, in an echo of that earlier, playground cruelty. Boyle herself remains defiant: "My story demonstrates that you shouldn't just look at the label," she writes in her autobiography, "you should look at the whole person...dreams are not impossible if you've got courage and a willingness to go on, no matter what the circumstances."
/ENDS