Susan Boyle (11 page)

Her comment was greeted by a round of applause.

‘It’s been a week full of pressure for all the acts here tonight, none more so than you,’ began Dec. ‘Was that worth it, in front of everybody here?’

‘Well worth it!’ cried Susan emphatically.

‘That’s where you really feel at home, on stage?’ asked Dec.

‘Of course I do. I’m among friends, am I not?’ asked Susan, getting the audience cheering once more.

‘Of course you are, and let’s go to the judges and find out,’ said Ant. ‘Piers, what did you think of Susan’s performance?’

‘Wow,’ said Piers. ‘Susan, you’ve had a very difficult week - you’ve had an amazing seven weeks, but you’ve had a very difficult week where you’ve been the centre of the world’s attention. There’s been negative headlines, you’ve been “boiling over”, “cracking up”, going to “quit the show”, all this kind of thing, and quietly, what I kept thinking to myself was, All you have to do to answer all your critics is to walk down that stage to that microphone, sing the song that we all fell in love with, sing it better than you did last time - and Susan, I’m not supposed to favour anyone in this competition as a judge, I should be impartial, but you know what? Forget it. That to me was the greatest performance I’ve seen in
Britain’s Got Talent
’s history. You should win this competition. I loved it.’

The audience was cheering again: they clearly agreed. Susan looked gracious up on the stage, and while Piers clearly meant it, it was the least he could say. After all, he had, inadvertently, been responsible for causing some of the distress she’d experienced that week. A very public avowal of loyalty from Piers was exactly what Susan needed at that stage.

Now it was Amanda’s turn. ‘Susan, I have never heard such powerful, confident vocals,’ she began. ‘You sang it so well this evening and I just echo what Piers said, really. You, out of everybody this week, have been under an enormous amount of pressure, but you did it, girl. You did it for Scotland and you did it for Great Britain.’ There was more thunderous applause. ‘And can I just say,’ Amanda added, ‘Simon had a tear in his eye. And I’ve never seen that before.’

Finally, it was the turn of the maestro. Brushing aside questions from Ant as to whether Amanda’s comment was true, he said, ‘I don’t know who’s going to win this competition, but you know, you’ve had a weird seven weeks. You had every right to walk away from this, and you could have walked away. You could have had a lot of stuff coming your way in America, and a lot of people said you shouldn’t even be in this competition. That you’re not equipped to deal with it. For what? For you to sit at home with your cat and say, “I’ve missed an opportunity.” I completely disagree with that. Well, I do. And you know, win or lose, you have the guts to come back here tonight, face your critics and you beat them. And that’s the most important thing.’

In the background, the cheers started again.

‘Whatever happens, Susan,’ Simon continued, ‘and you know, I’ve got to know the real Susan Boyle, which is not the person I’ve seen portrayed in the media, who is a very nice, shy person who just wants a break, you can walk away from this, win or lose, with your head held high, Susan. I absolutely adore you.’

‘That makes me feel really good, thanks very much,’ said Susan, blowing a kiss as she left the stage.

 

Back in her hometown of Blackburn, the atmosphere was electric. Over a hundred locals had gathered in the Happy Valley to watch the show, and when Susan walked on stage, total silence descended. Throughout the village, almost everyone was glued to their TV screens, and when her performance ended, the place erupted. Susan was certainly a winner there.

Back in London, though, it was a different story. To everyone’s surprise and consternation, Susan didn’t win on the night - that honour went to the dance troupe Diversity. Susan remained gracious in defeat though: ‘They’re very entertaining,’ she said. ‘The best act won.’ But even so it was hard not to feel cheated. This modern-day Cinderella had been at the heart of a fairytale, and the nation expected a fairytale ending. They didn’t get one.

Everyone involved was shocked. ‘Susan was there at the top all along, but she was incredibly gracious,’ said Simon Cowell as the news sunk in. ‘She’s won a lot of people over and people have got to see the real Susan. She’s incredible.’

‘Can I just say on behalf of all of us that it was amazing to meet you,’ said Dec. Although he was far too professional to say so, it looked as if he thought they’d got the wrong result, too.

Despite losing the competition, there was no question that it would put a stop to Susan’s meteoric rise - matters had gone too far for that - but it did underline some real concerns. Susan had seemed certain to win, and the fact that she hadn’t was ascribed in some quarters to the negative publicity she’d received in the run-up to the show. People didn’t seem to understand that her erratic behaviour was a direct result of her learning difficulties, and just thought Susan was being temperamental. The majority may not have thought like that, but a vocal minority did, and it had damaged her chances. That was almost certainly the real reason she didn’t win.

And that led directly to the next question: with the weight of expectation lying heavy on her shoulders, how was she going to take it now that she’d lost? Was Susan going to go off the rails? As the judges had acknowledged, this had been a nerve-racking week for all the contestants, but especially Susan. There had never been a phenomenon like her before, and no one seemed certain quite what to do next. With the
Britain’s Got Talent
tour coming up, decisions had to be made, and the question on everyone’s lips was, would Susan be well enough to attend? She would be the biggest pull on the tour, but if she joined it would the producers be blamed for putting her under even more pressure when she was clearly unable to cope?

Susan herself could be forgiven for not taking it all in. Asked what she’d do next, she replied bravely, ‘I hope to get an album out and I’ll just play it by ear. What a journey. It was unbelievable and very humbling. Thank you for everything.’

Susan’s family and friends were becoming increasingly concerned, but at least she had the support of her friend Lorraine Campbell, who had been at school with Susan, and was staying in London with her, acting as a shoulder to cry on, as well as a much-needed rock. Having known Susan all her life, she was able to calm her down when she got too het up, and she also took Susan to Mass when she was feeling overwhelmed. Even so, it was becoming obvious that ultimately Susan was going to need professional help.

Susan still had a future, though, and a very profitable one at that. Estimates started flying around about how much money Susan would make out of it all, and while the amounts varied wildly, soaring up to £10 million, there was no doubt that she stood to earn more than the show’s £100,000 prize money. Her brother John certainly forecast great things: ‘The world will definitely hear from Susan Boyle again,’ he said. ‘The show is by no means over. Hopefully now she can relax a bit and just sing, which is all she ever wanted to do. The family are delighted and proud. She put on a tremendous show. Our parents will be looking down with big smiles on their faces.’

It didn’t take long for rumours to surface about what really happened the night Susan lost. Once backstage, there was what seemed like the beginning of a breakdown. Susan was said to have shouted, ‘I hate this show. I hate it,’ before allegedly running down the corridor in her bra and throwing a cup of water over a floor manager. Clearly no one had a clue what to do.

Susan’s brother Gerry said, ‘They just left her on her own. She has got a short fuse and she just blew. Who wouldn’t under that pressure? She’s told me, “I feel tired and stressed,” and that’s understandable.’

The production company played the whole thing down, merely admitting that Susan had had a few ‘wobbles’. In certain quarters there was bemusement. After all, though it was disappointing that she hadn’t won, she still had a career ahead of her, so why all the fuss? But that was to totally misunderstand the problems facing Susan. She had been part of a massive project, and now it had all come tumbling down and she found there were very few people to support her. There was talk of meeting with Simon Cowell the following week to discuss an album, but what Susan really needed was human comfort, and plenty of it.

Everyone knew that Susan had been deprived of oxygen at birth, but what they seemed reluctant to accept was that this behaviour was a direct result of that. As her neighbours in Blackburn had testified, she occasionally had fits of anger, even in a quiet Scottish village, far away from the stresses and strains of the showbusiness world, where Susan now found herself. She needed calm and compassion, strength and understanding, but instead she found herself surrounded by people who didn’t know how to handle or comfort her.

What they did know, though, was that she needed professional help, and so Susan was taken to a doctor, who told her she needed complete rest. This was played down by those around her, with her spokesperson merely commenting, ‘She has been seen by her private GP, who supports her decision to take a few days out for rest and recovery.’ She was going to need a lot more than that, though.

At least Diversity were doing the decent thing and wishing her well. ‘Susan was very gracious,’ said the leader of the troupe, Ashley Banjo. ‘She was really cool and so nice about it. She told us we were something special. Susan gave us big hugs and had a bit of a dance with us. There was a bit of poppin’ and lockin’. She’s a cool bird. Susan has become a superstar across the world, and to beat her is still a massive shock. We thought she was amazing on Saturday night, as always. She’s going to have a great career.’ It was hard to escape the conclusion that even they had mixed feelings about their win.

Matters escalated. No one would admit exactly what was going on behind the scenes, but it was known that Susan had been taken to The Priory clinic after fainting in front of production staff, and she was being treated there for exhaustion. Concern about what was happening to her had by now reached such a peak that there were suggestions that the makers of the show should face an inquiry.
Britain’s Got Talent
and Syco, Cowell’s entertainment company, were paying for her treatment, but continued to play the situation down: ‘We provided Susan with a counsellor in the last week, when it became evident to us in the run-up to the final that she needed support.’ That was putting it mildly.

Even Gordon Brown, the prime minister and a fellow Scot, found the need to comment on GMTV, ‘I hope Susan Boyle is OK, because she is a really, really nice person.’

This did, at least, allow the more negative element of the public to see that those public spats were not Susan behaving like a diva, but a cry for help. Intensive debate raged about the morality of taking a fragile woman out of a close-knit community and exposing her to the glare of the worldwide media.

The question about the
Britain’s Got Talent
tour had still not been resolved, and so Simon Cowell stepped in, saying, ‘She won’t be doing anything until she feels better.’ He must have been worried, too, in case the situation rebounded badly on him.

Irene Carter, the mother of one of the members of the dance troupe Sugar Free, had seen what was happening close up.

‘Susan was acting very strange all week,’ she told the
Daily Express
. ‘One time, staff working on the show backstage asked if she was OK and she said she was talking to her friend. She then introduced everyone in the room to this “friend”, who wasn’t actually there. Another time she came up to my daughter Emma in the hotel and asked to borrow her mobile phone. She left this really bizarre message, which went on for several minutes. When she got off the phone she said she had been talking to her cat back at home.’

This was the last thing the programme makers needed: Susan’s problems were beginning to look much worse than anyone had realized. The breast-beating in the press about whether she had been used as a pawn in a high-stakes commercial game continued, with fingers pointing at the amount of money various people stood to make out of this vulnerable woman.

Matters reached such a pitch that Talkback Thames, the company behind the programme, was forced to comment. ‘It is a talent show at the end of the day, and people are auditioning on their talent merits,’ said a spokeswoman. ‘There is no formal psychological testing at the beginning of the show. Compared with something like
Big Brother
, where you are looking at people going into a house for three months, the people on
Britain’s Got Talent
have three or four performances maximum and spend only seven to ten days in a hotel for the semi-finals and final. It is a very different scenario. But because of the level of media attention and the speed with which this has become a global phenomenon, we will be reviewing all of our policies in relation to psychological assessment.’

At least Susan was receiving proper treatment now. There had been reports that she had been sectioned, but that was not the case. She attended The Priory voluntarily by ambulance with, at her doctor’s request, a police escort. And she was beginning to calm down. Her brother Gerry spoke to her. ‘She’s at The Priory, talking to people there about how she feels and where she goes from here,’ he told the
Guardian
. ‘She sounded a bit happier, she sounded a bit more like herself, but certainly a bit more rested. She’s been on a tremendous roller-coaster. There’s been an enormous amount of media speculation and intense activity. She’s not used to that. She’s coming to terms with that, now that she’s no longer an anonymous face. I think what led up to it was the build-up to the show, and just psyching herself up for that, and then wondering after the show, “Where do I go now?”’

It was a question that still loomed large as matters remained in limbo. Susan recovered quite quickly, and with hindsight it’s apparent that it wasn’t a particularly serious episode. But at the time, no one knew how long she would be ill and what she would be able to manage in the immediate future. There was also the matter of the much-discussed album. Far from rushing something out in the immediate wake of the show, that would have to be more carefully paced.