The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Coffee Lounge => Topic started by: jameslindsay on April 12, 2009, 08:30:05 am
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I do not watch much TV but I put it on when I went to bed last night and there was a re showing of "Britains got talent". I am not a fan of these talent shows but I thought it would give me a laugh and help me unwind. When they came to Glasgow they "honed in" on a lady named Susan Boyle from West Lothian. Well, without being unkind Susan looks everything you would not expect with "showbusiness". She is unemployed, 40 ish I believe, over weight and well I don't want to be unkind so if you are interested watch this edited clip and see for yourself.
She said she wanted to be like Elaine Paige and both the audience and judges laughed at her and quite clearly they all expected her to be awful. Well, she was not awful and she got a standing ovation. It goes to show that you should never "judge a book by its cover". If she goes any further in the contest I wonder how the press will treat her, remember how awful they were to Michelle McManus because she was Scottish and over weight??? Time will tell, but I wish this gutsy lady luck!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il5TBgD9kHI
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She was fantastic
Bless her, I'm sure if she does go far they will give her a make over although I found her natural persona indearing
When she does do well she will be a British superstar if she does'nt then she must be scottish ;D
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Sad, but very true!
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She was A-MAZE-ING. I got up to go and do something/get something...can't remember....but just stopped in my tracks when she started to sing. Go-girl-go.
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she was fantastic but sadly for every 1 gem of real talent these shows uncover, we have to put up with 50,000 talentless shits who's ego grossly overshadows their ability
then again, i do love watching the seriously misguided, useless gits. Many of them need therapy rather than tv exposure
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Vive l'ecossaise. She is fandabydozie! Absolutely fantastic - I am sure she will go far, and yes, they will give her a makeover. I look forward to seeing her again.
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WOW Wow and wow, You go girl. ;D ;D ;D
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That brilliant,
I love that song too, Very elaine pagne style.
hope she doesn't get lost in the crowd of no hopers
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If they do her up, and stop her being a wee tad mouthy (a wee bit embarrassing I found) I am sure she will go far - that is one helluva voice!
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I loved her just as she was...ooooozing with personality, could do well in films I think....keep her as she is, no makeover, that wouyld spoil and take away a lot of her charm......brill
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What a star, we all had tears in our eyes, really - that put a few people on the spot re how we judge others the way they look and talk. What did you think about the guy with the Ferrero-eating-record from Dunfermline? We rolled on the floor laughing and I'm sure he meant us to lol
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i bought a couple of packs of ferrero rocher today, i love them but i'm going for the record in a few days
i reckon he must have been a plant by the marketing dept of ferrero rocher
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Just "google" her name "Susan Boyle" and I think we already have a Star. Good luck to her, I look forward to seeing/hearing much more of her and apparantly after the 1st week of the show she is tipped to win.
Going off track a bit if any one is a fan of this song, Petula Clark sings a version of it on You Tube. I think this is the most moving version I have heard of it and I love it. Watch and see...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUX3OY_INJU
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I too saw this lady and was amazed by her voice, i hope she does win without any makeover as we should except her for how she is, and looks. There is too much emphasis on looks these days and we are teaching some very unrealistic morals and values to future generations. She has a beautiful gift.
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Just had another look at this on You Tube, the version I looked at has now had 18.5 million hits!
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There's a little bit of a sequal here.
The Daily Record have, for once, indulged in some good journalism (I expect the four horsemen to come riding down the drive at any moment ;)) and managed to find a copy of the only CD that Ms Boyle has ever cut. It was for charity back in 1999 and she sung the blues staple "Cry Me A River", a very, very different song to the Les Mis one she sung on the telly-box.
If anything this version is even better.
You can find it below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXwc-i5eYdU (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXwc-i5eYdU)
To be able to flip between styles like that is, I think, the mark of real talent. I just can't wait to see what she comes up with next :).
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It's kind of interesting wondering what is going to happen next for this lady. I read in todays paper that the Americans have got to hear of Miss Boyle and she is getting a lot of TV coverage over there. Let's hope only good things come of all this for her, thanks Alex.
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I love her"cry me a river" version, I can see her getting her own chat show as she has a unique charactor that would go down well interviewing people. Wounder what this weeks Britains got talent has in store, I also loved the Greek dancers,they were so funny, hated the stripper, I found her a bit distasteful, nothing to do with her size just the whole thing and I am definitely NOT a prude.
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I love her"cry me a river" version, I can see her getting her own chat show as she has a unique charactor that would go down well interviewing people. Wounder what this weeks Britains got talent has in store, I also loved the Greek dancers,they were so funny, hated the stripper, I found her a bit distasteful, nothing to do with her size just the whole thing and I am definitely NOT a prude.
ha ha ha ha ha, the stripper!!! LOL. I about lost my lunch at that one.
as i said earlier, some of these folk need therapy not national exposure!
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It looks like Susan Boyle is going for world domination now, quite amazing. I read the next song we will see her perform is "Whistle down the wind" by Andrew Lloyd Webber. With the amount of support she has enjoed in 2 weeks there really can't be any way possible that she can't win the competition. My friend in Canada says even over there she is on every radio/tv show and front page of most newspapers - every day.
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she's even been mentioned in the latest southpark!!!
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She doesn't need to be in that competition now shes a star in her own right. ;D
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I heard an interview on a morning programme last week, and she sounds absolutely lovely! Very unspoiled, very natural. She came across to me on the TV programme as a wee bit simple, but she most definitely isn't. She is just a really nice, well brought up lady with a beautiful voice. I did say in my previous post that they would probably do a make over on her so it will be interesting to watch her progress. May she do well.
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Annie I think they say that her parents were very strict with her and she was never allowed friends or allowed out socialincing. I think she may just be very, very innocent and led a very sheltered life. I just hope no one takes advantage of her and rips her off.
Here's the latest 10 yr old recording they have found of her, now ofcourse on You Tube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ai27pvt-PY
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Just when you thought we were Susan Boyle free this creeps up...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WFoc6Ihl0w
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Her voice is so much better now, but even that was outstanding. I am really looking forward to hearing her again
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Time to resurrect this one having just watched the Semi Final of Britains got Talent. After a shaky start Susan pulled off yet another spectacular act. I think the pressure she must have been under was unbelievable. One of the Judges hit the nail on the head when they said "the eyes of the world" were on her tonight. Indeed they were.
I think she is brilliant. I do cringe when she starts her nonsense though but I'm sure this is just nerves. I do not think there is any chance of her NOT winning this competition and I am delighted that she is Scottish (until she is a mega star and then she will of course be British ha ha).
Tonight's performance is already on You Tube.
Rock on Susan!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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I am quite gob smacked at the result of tonights contest, will there be huge public out cry? Persoanlly I think Susan Boyle was robbed!!!!
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James, looking at her face when Diversity were announced as the winners I think she was much relieved. She had been extremely serious prior to that almost to the point of being sullen, then her face broke into a lovely smile. I think she has been very hard done by, the Press have been awful to her. I would have liked to see her win too, but I wonder if the pressure would have been too great fro her. One psychologist said that he would have withdrawn her from the competition last week if he had been her doctor because of possible mental scarring. I will look forward greatly to buying her first album - I wonder what label she will be on?
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Annie looked to me as though she was heavily sedated. My heart goes out to her. If the papers are to be believed last week they said next month she was going off to record an album - music of the musicals, all arranged by Simon Cowall. I do not think this is the last we have heard of her and I too look forward to buying many of her CD's. The show has to have been a fix ha ha.
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Show business is hard, Susan has made it anyway and Diversity were very polished and choreographed well, an entertaining night. I think the Greek Dad and son will be inundated with bookings, I worry that it will be too much for them, they are fun. Susan's recordings will sell millions and they already are thinking about making a film of her life!!!! Her performance gave me goosebumps!!!
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Just more dance fans voting - and it must have been close. Last years' near winners have had records out, it will not be the last we've heard from Susan Boyle! I don't read tabloids, so have no idea what all that was about! I only heard Lily Allans' comment on the radio - she's the right one talking about talent (remember her attempt to impress Russell Brand at the X-mas quiz with rude jokes?) , all she's got is a famous dad...:&>
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We all thought she looked like she may have been sedated. But we also noted like Annie, that she seemed much relieved to have Diversity named as the winners instead. Still, I'm sure we'll see a lot, lot more of her.
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My thought was sedation too - but as a singer myself I know she couldn't possibly have sung like that if she was sedated. She wouldn't have been able to remember the words apart from anything else. The tabloids tore her to bits, James. Apparently when she gets stressed she hits the roof - she's not alone in that(that's me to a T), but they got wind of it (perhaps another competitor?) and blew it up. It's a pity they couldn't have kept the papers away from her.
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I see on the BBC New Website that Susan Boyle has been admitted to the Priory with exhaustion. I don't think this lady is going to be able to cope in the limelight. The newspapers should really hang their heads in shame at the way their callous actions hurt and effect so called "celebrities". You could see on Saturday night that she was a "wreck". I wish her a very speedy recovery and contentment within herself whatever path she chooses to take.
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Poor Susan, she has been living quietly in her home where she led a simple life and suddenly been at a 24/7 party where she became the center of attention, good and bad, she needs some time away completely, I think if when returns home she will also face an onslaught of attention, someone needs to take her under their wing and make sure she is given some time out!! Hope Simon Cowell fits the bill and dose not push her too much. I also wounder if she can cope, it may be a case of crash and burn, whatever happens, I hope she settles into a happy life.
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Sadly most managers/promoters will see in Susan is ££££££££ signs. She could make them an absolute fortune and is she isn't heavily protected she will go BANG. Perhaps she will never cope with the fame thing. All she wanted to do was sing for her Queen, she wan't expecting what happened and yes it is a risk when you enter such a public competition but remember she isn't the "brightest fish in the tank" and therefore would never have thought anything would happen to her. Let's face it never before has anything like this happened so quickly and unexpectedly from an unknown face going on TV.
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All Susan Boyle wanted to do was record an album, my guess is she'll record it (get paid handsomely) and we'll never see or hear of her again - at her own choosing.
good luck to her.
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All done in the name of entertainment huh? This poor woman has been very badly treated and quite clearly should be a STAR. Speedy recovery wished to her and let's hope the idiots writing the crap in the newspapers day after day take a break from persecuting her.
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Hear Hear!
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I just WISH.....................
That someone had 'discovered' her when she was young and perhaps more capable of dealing with the pressure. I once sang in front of thousands aged only 11 and it had no effect on me at all.
She is streets ahead of me, of course, and she has the most wonderful voice and to me it sounds 'trained' but whether she had training as a youngster, who knows.
I wish her what she wants from life, nothing more, nothing less. She has given and awful lot of people a great deal of pleasure these last few weeks.
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For once some one writes the truth...
It Was Us, Susan Boyle, Who Drove You Mad
Quentin Letts, 06.02.09, 01:09 PM EDT
We are guilty for the dowdy Scot's rapid rise to--and fall from--fame.
Susan Boyle
Television, most voracious of mediums, just chewed and spat out another innocent. Susan Boyle, the 48-year-old Scottish singer and talent show contestant, has been taken to a clinic after a psychiatric breakdown.
Poor Susan. The whole world, it seems, has been watching her, cheering her--and laughing at her. It laughed because she was not pretty in the conventional sense. It laughed because she was plainly a bit peculiar. And it laughed because the turbo-charged beauty of her voice contrasted sharply with her dowdy looks.
London's newspapers nicknamed her "the hairy angel" almost as soon as she burst into the news cycle in April. Paparazzi, film crews and Fleet Street Macintoshes chased her down the street and made her life an exhausting misery.
She was given a fashion makeover. She was followed into bars and hotels and had her remarks eavesdropped on at all hours. She was hot copy. Hardly anyone stopped to worry about her learning difficulties.
Now that the Britain's Got Talent show has pocketed its money and come to the end of its current run, however, the woman who helped make it such a success is under sedation in a secure environment. The showbiz jackals have picked her carcass clean.
Effectively, a defenseless, middle-aged virgin was placed in fame's microwave and went "Pop!" The virgin thing is a major fact in the matter. It was her lack of worldliness--she admitted she had never been kissed romantically--that made her so interesting to the media in the first place.
Imagine: In this era of sexual incontinence, a Western woman who had almost reached her 50th birthday without being snogged. News announcers, disclosing this nugget, gave small head gestures that meant, "Unbelievable, ain't it?" Boyle was soon left in no doubt that she was a freak.
When she first appeared on the talent show, the three judges on the program radiated mockery and ennui. Boyle looked like an off-duty nun. She was plump, hirsute, about as sexy as a wet weekend in her home county of West Lothian.
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Simon Cowell, who is not only a judge but also one of the money men behind Britain's Got Talent, shot her a look that said, "Get that ridiculous old bag out of here." Members of the audience shielded their eyes, unable to look at such a strange sausage.
But then she opened her mouth and started singing. It was the first time she had performed since her old mother's death, and certainly the first time she had sung to such a big crowd. The judges' jaws dropped. The audience started whooping. It was marvelous--a moment the beauty of music trumped all the customary plastic surgery and lip gloss and plastic hairdos of spangled showbiz.
The video clip was stuck on the Internet, and the world caught fire, as it can so quickly these days. Boyle, a woman who previously had been employed only as a trainee cook, went from maiden-aunt crooner to global sensation faster than you could set a bowl of milk jelly.
In fame's early hours, she was fantastically excited and lapped up the attention.
"Su-Bo," as the tabloids are now calling her, was clearly set to become the subject of a biopic motion picture. Until Saturday's night's Britain's Got Talent final, which she was expected to win easily, that movie would have been a classic ugly-duckling-turns-into-swan yarn, a tale of how the church volunteer from a modest family in Scotland won a competition watched by 19 million people--roughly a third of Britain's population.
That was going to be the storyline, anyway. But Boyle did not win the show. To nearly everyone's great surprise, perhaps not least her own, she came in second. The phone-in vote was won instead by a youth dance troupe.
Boyle had already been acting oddly. In the day before the live show, she had shouted at people and was overheard swearing--she the church volunteer!--at a television set. She was not sleeping much. Nor did she eat well. She was living away from her family at a smart London hotel. (In her old life, she had rarely patronized hotels.) Every day, fresh stories about her strange behavior surfaced. The fashion makeover, done to please her new media friends, backfired. Columnists started saying she was even uglier now that she was trying to look fashionable.
On the day after the final episode, an ambulance was called to her hotel and she was gently led away to the Priory, one of London's better-known clinics for the unsteady. Reportedly, she felt she had "let everyone down" by not winning. She worried that she would never now be given the chance to sing professionally--the one thing that interested her all along.
And so the biopic has experienced a plot twist. It will make it a better story in some ways, though not for the unhappy, confused Boyle.
Cowell and his TV production company Sy-Co (pronounced, oh dear, "psycho") have been accused of failing to look after Boyle, and relevant wording of the terrestrial TV license conditions governing broadcasters is being discussed.
Personally, I'd say the TV program makers are not entirely to blame. I would even make the case that these talent shows, although vulgar, are a worthwhile device, reintroducing ideas of competitiveness and failure to a Britain whose state schools have sought to extinguish all concept of selection based on merit.
Cowell and Co. are far from saintly. They have undoubtedly made millions off of Boyle's weirdness. But that is something freak shows in Victorian times used to do.
The guilty party is, surely, all of us--all the members of a society that fell on an un-photogenic virgin as though she were the last tribal bush woman in the Amazon. Boyle would not have been so amazing to us, and therefore would not have been such a big story, if she had been even moderately good-looking or had serial boyfriends. No, it was our own obsession with plastic looks and sex above all else that made her seem unusual. She was just a simple soul from small-town Scotland. Why should she share our sophisticated, decadent view?
Let's hope Boyle recovers her health swiftly and then returns to her family in West Lothian. Her neighbors up there are proud of her for coming second and intend to give her a belter of a welcome when she finally comes home. They may never have kissed her, but at least they loved her for the right reasons.