"I can't ever see her coming back one day looking like Beyoncé. The whole village is saying, 'They can try, but they'll never change her.'"
So says the landlady at the local (lounge) bar frequented by Blackburn’s singing star Susan Boyle. The 47 year old has not yet won Britain’s got Talent – but since she’s about to appear on the Oprah Winfrey Show – the result is surely a formality. The big question is – will she change?
Even though the celebrity-addicted public currently “love her as she is”, every aspect of the West Lothian’s spinster’s appearance is currently “wrong” in their normally relentless and unforgiving view.
Her hair is short, stubbornly curly and shot through with grey. Her face is unmade up, shiny and clearly 47 years old. Her physique is stocky. Her stance is faintly masculine and her eyebrows are full. So much so that American chat-show host Jay Leno was able to impersonate Susan by merely adding a wig to an outsize version of her tea-dance dress.
And it gets better – or worse – depending on your point of view. She lives in a four-bedroom council house in the former mining village of Blackburn, cared for her mum, has slight learning difficulties after being deprived of oxygen during birth and – almost a crime against humanity in this sex-obsessed world – has never been kissed and – worse – doesn’t mind admitting it.
If there was ever a walking antidote to celebrity, Susan Boyle is it. The monstrous, superficial system that is the British entertainment industry should have expelled her automatically like an unwanted guest at a celebrity wedding. The sexist, ageist lifeform that is ITV should have rejected her like an unmatched organ transplant. But it didn’t. Instead Susan Boyle’s dowdy appearance has helped Simon Cowell and ITV create a new “look” for the credit-crunched, emotionally exhausted noughties. A look which is a non-look. A look which exists only to contrast with a superlative voice. A look you can trust.To read more click here.
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