Susan Boyle is currently the nation’s favourite special-needs virgin. With the web literally bursting at the seams making unflattering comparisons between her and – among others – Phil Mitchell, a hairy potato and a badly-inflated Jasper Carrott, it’s all to easy to pick on her. As I just proved.
The reaction to her singing is the result of nearly ten years build up on Britain’s Got Talent, The X-Factor and all the way back to whichever of the Pop shows came first. The one with Myleene. And it’s all about the way that they only show the best of the best and the worst of the worst, and the predictable editing.
When a teenage girl sobs to Dec and Ant about her father’s dying wish for her to be exploited on TV, the accompanying piano music is enough of a clue that she’ll probably not be laughed out.
It’s obvious, even to the most typical ITV phone-vote entrant, that Cowell and chums don’t audition every single hopeful that has bothered to queue up overnight outside a football stadium. There’s level after level of pre-audition, singing to a soulless corporate drone in a suit, who nods them through quickly, without having to go through the tedious repetitive Cowell-quote-o-matic. Ten points for each one that he uses:
* Literally
* Potentially
* Arguably
* One of the best / worst
* ever heard
* in my life
* Normally, I don’t like ___ but you
* 110%
The only people who make it as far as the judges are the very, very good, and the very, very bad. Idiots brought back solely to be laughed at by three millionaires, who then go away and forget about them while wanking themselves silly on piles of money. The plebs, the weirdos, the thickies, are they told that they can win the competition? That everything could work out for them? Basically, lied to so that they’ll come back and look a twat while Kate Thornton sniggers at them – the irony of laughing at someone inept is probably lost on her.
Weirdly, they go along with it. Do none of them have jobs to go back to? If I worked with a bloke that had been called a twat on national TV, he’d never be able to forget it.
So when Susan Boyle first stepped out onto the stage, it seemed obvious which camp she fell into. Harshly edited footage of the audience booing and looking like impatient shits turned things against her, and as she stumbled over the word “village”, it became clearer and clearer that she wasn’t all there. Didn’t have the X factor. But possibly only one X chromosone.
Then she started singing, and it was good. Very good. But it was all about that moment of shock when she opened her mouth and didn’t mutter and squeak like the idiot we all presumed her to be. We’d prepared to laugh and were disappointed. Much like readers of this article.
Now everyone in the world has seen her on YouTube, the shock value has gone, so she’s got to do something even more spectacular next time, or it’ll be a disappointing “oh, that again”. And the fickle middle finger of fame will stick itself up at her, and she will roll her way back to Scottishland and quietly spend the rest of her life being pointed at by strangers.
Something she’s well used to.
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