Susan Boyle by Alice Montgomery Read Free Book Online

another.
    ‘Susan has an amazing voice,’ said Shaheen, who was nothing if not diplomatic. ‘I don’t want to be a rival, but if I won I wouldn’t be complaining. I know I am a good singer and I think I can sing as well as anyone else in the competition. I enjoy doing it so much.’
    ‘Susan and Shaheen are very different singers,’ his mother Karen chipped in. ‘If it comes down to it, may the best person win on the night.’
    Unlike Susan, Shaheen already had some professional experience. He had appeared in Torchwood and Casualty , and had toured with the musical Thriller , in which he played the young Michael Jackson. But it seemed that Susan’s amateurishness didn’t matter: it was all part of her charm.
    Even without the discovery of Susan and the rivalry between her and Shaheen, this series of Britain’s Got Talent was getting a lot of attention. Simon Cowell made headlines when he appointed a fourth judge, the actress Kelly Brook, and then made even more headlines when he dispensed with her services just two days into filming. Cowell said her presence upset the dynamic of the show, while Kelly herself claimed that Ant and Dec had been behind it, partly because they were angry not to have been consulted and partly because she unwisely asked them what they did!
    All the while, though, Susan’s story continued to fascinate. The next snippet about her life that came to light was that shortly before she appeared on television, Susan applied to join the Cantilena Choir in Livingston, West Lothian, but had been turned down. ‘She made an enquiry to join our choir, but we had no vacancies,’ explained Shirley Ullman, the choir secretary. ‘When she spoke to me she had just done the audition for Britain’s Got Talent . It was a shock when I saw her on the television. We are a very small choir so we didn’t want to be top heavy. There are only eighteen of us and we are more of a chamber choir rather than there being fifty to sixty people, so we just couldn’t have too many singers.’ On this occasion, however, they would seem to have been the ones missing out.
    Talk continued about a record deal, and as fans and journalists began visiting Blackburn to get a glimpse of the unlikely new star, Susan, who had resurfaced, was forced to put a wall up at her house to shield herself from the curious gaze of the public.
    Meanwhile, Boyle-mania continued to grow. It emerged that as far back as 1999, Susan had sung ‘Cry Me A River’ on a record made for charity - a very rare disc, as only 1,000 had ever been made - and one had now surfaced on eBay, attracting bids reaching as high as £1,000.
    Hugh Jackman, star of the X-Men film series, became the latest Hollywood star to declare himself a fan. ‘Where is Susan Boyle?’ he tweeted. ‘I am ready for a duet.’ This wasn’t as outlandish a request as it seemed since Hugh is in fact a musical talent in his own right, having starred in a concert version of Carousel at New York’s Carnegie Hall. And while Alain Boublil might not be as well known as some of the other names speaking about Susan, he certainly knows a thing or two about music, having written the lyrics for ‘I Dreamed A Dream’. ‘I think of Edith Piaf,’ he said. ‘Piaf was a small woman who looked like nothing, and then she opened her mouth and this beautiful sound came out. Even the most cynical people I know have been moved.’ Elaine Paige and now Edith Piaf - high praise indeed.
     
    Meanwhile, Susan’s audition continued to become one of the most viewed in the history of the internet, with over 100 million hits: ‘There have been moments in the history of viral video when it seems as if the whole world unites around one phenomenon, ’ declared Matt Cutler, a spokesman for the American video tracking company Visible Measures. ‘The latest star is the unassuming, unexpectedly talented Susan Boyle. The humble and previously unknown Susan Boyle in less than one week has trumped