OPINION: The real genius of this story lies with the producers of 'Britain's Got Talent'
PERHAPS IT is economic disaster that has left our hearts in such dire need of warming, but it’s getting to the point where the ventricles are starting to fry.
Last week we were told that we have a new TV angel, surely a sign of bad times. Susan Boyle's audition on Britain's Got Talenthad been viewed by 25 million people as of last Friday.
In what the Washington Postdescribed as "a digital flash flood in the media age", Boyle, a single woman from West Lothian, who is unemployed, last week sang on Good Morning America, talked to Larry King, and is shortly to appear on Oprah.
The only person who has a pick of sense about Boyle is . . . well, no one.
Cynics are sobbing. Television people are plundering the children's DVD collections for fairy tales. Susan Boyle is Cinderella. Susan Boyle is the Ugly Duckling. One newspaper affectionately referred to her as "the singing Scottish spinster" ( Irish Times Weekend Review)
Boyle seems a willing captive in this storm of reassuring cliche. She is said to be in hiding somewhere in West Lothian, guarded by her brother and talking only, it would seem, to the Sunday Times.
Journalists have called her success, in so many words, the revenge of ugly women (charming).
Her singing teacher has come forward, or more likely, was hunted down to explain that Boyle took singing lessons for years. She has auditioned for other television talent shows before.
A charity recording she once made of Cry Me A Riveris on the internet.
Even her delivery into this world has been investigated: she was deprived of oxygen at birth, resulting in mild brain damage which meant that she had special help at school.
Boyle looks like the kind of woman who would normally appear on television only if her cat had been rescued by the fire brigade and in fact she has a cat, whose name is Pebbles. Or she might be in the background in one of Jamie Oliver’s programmes about dinner ladies. In other words Boyle is a middle-aged woman, unglamorous, without make-up, and tending to roundness.
An ordinary person. The type of ordinary person that only Victoria Wood is interested in investigating on screen.
Not that anyone is interested in investigating Boyle, just in digging up the facts, which is not at all the same thing.
Boyle is not a tanned and leggy lovely with a French manicure – she just sounds like one.
She looks like a loser but proved to be a winner. Her success in singing I Dreamed A Dreamfrom Les Misérablesto the Britain's Got Talentaudience was showbiz heaven. A recession banquet.
However, the real genius of this story lies with the producers of Britain's Got Talent, of whom über judge Simon Cowell is one. This genius showed how they built the story of Boyle, who had been filmed earlier in the selection process quietly eating a sandwich. We none of us look our best while quietly eating a sandwich.
And Boyle looked like she was humbly waiting for some more glamorous relative to finish performing. She was set up as a flop.
When Boyle told Cowell that she was 47, he rolled his eyes, or appeared to, the editing on Britain's Got Talentis slick, and it is a programme so insincere that it is hard to believe anything that purports to happen on it.
Cowell was born on October 7th, 1959, which makes Boyle younger than him. She quietly told him that she would like to be as famous as Elaine Paige.
A young girl in the audience was shown looking contemptuous.
It is true that all three judges on Britain Loves Talentare patronising, fake and without any redeeming qualities whatsoever. They seem to appear on all of Cowells's programmes : X Factor, American Idol, Britain's Got Talent, and it is hard to tell any of these programmes, or the judges who preside over them, apart.
They are pantomimes and the judges are the pantomime villains. The contestants are the innocents abroad and we are the baying mob.
However, it could be argued that the reception given to Boyle was even more insulting than usual.
Piers Morgan said: “Without a doubt that was the biggest surprise in my three years on the show. When you stood there with that cheeky grin and said you wanted to be as famous as Elaine Paige everyone was laughing at you. No one is laughing now.” (This is actually an echo of a good joke by the late Bob Monkhouse. We must assume that Piers Morgan meant it kindly.)
Let us hope that, with the ruthlessness and ambition of any great performer, Boyle used her dowdy appearance to confound the shabby expectations of her.
The surprise manufactured by the show’s producers, patronising as it was, worked for Boyle and she seems pleased by it.
Cowell has now said that, if Boyle appears on Oprah, she could have a number one album in America. "I'm predicting that," he said.
Boyle is crossing continents. We have taken her to our chilly hearts. Let’s hope she enjoys the experience.