Fame on flip of coin

Paul Pott's renditiion of Nessun Dorma brought the Britain's Got Talent to their feet. Photo / Herald on Sunday

Bullied as a boy, a chubby cellphone salesman with a penchant for opera-singing flips a coin to decide whether to enter a TV talent show.

His win nets him £100,000 ($260,000) and propels him to international stardom. It sounds like a modern-day fairy tale but it's a true story, and one that's about to become a Hollywood feature film, made by Paramount Pictures.

The tale's unlikely Cinderella, Paul Potts, who launched his second album, Passione, in New Zealand last week, jokes that his wife of six years, Jules, wants to play herself and wants Johnny Depp to play Paul. "I'm not too bothered who plays me," he says, "but I've heard the name Jack Black bandied around."

The rags-to-riches fairy tale began in March 2007 when a short, balding, overweight bloke with broken teeth and a cheap suit shuffled "like a sack of potatoes" (as he puts it) into a Cardiff audition for the TV show Britain's Got Talent.

Seeing the crowd were "baying for blood", he almost turned and ran from the stage, "The previous act was a man making birdsounds by whistling and a woman dancing to his birdsounds with a pashmina," Potts explains. "They were booed and heckled like anything, and I thought 'Why am I here?"' When the judges asked him that exact question, Potts awkwardly, almost apologetically, answered "I'm here to sing opera."

Notoriously harsh American Idol judge Simon Cowell shot him a scornful look. But as contestant number 38129 launched into a spine-tingling rendition of classic aria Nessun Dorma, the judges' expressions slowly changed from disdain to shock and smiles.

The song brought tears to the eyes of audience members and judge Amanda Holden. "I think we've got a case of a little lump of coal here that's going to turn into a diamond," she said after the standing ovation.

Shortly after winning the final, Potts was hustled on to a flight to New York to make a live appearance on NBC's The Today Show from Times Square, facing "photographers around every corner" and a media scrum vying for him to appear on their shows.

Sony didn't waste any time in snapping up Potts or in capitalising on the surge of popularity. His first album, One Chance, outsold the entire British top 10 in its first week and rocketed to No1 in 13 countries.

His winning performance on Britain's Got Talent has notched up 63 million YouTube hits, and there have been 74 million hits on him in total, something he says has been central to his international success.

Credited with opening up the exclusive world of opera to Joe Public, Potts embarked on a 100-show sellout world tour in January last year. That's all a long way from his job at the CarPhone Warehouse. An earnest, humble bloke, the 38-year-old says his success still feels "a bit surreal. Sometimes I feel like it's happening to someone else, like I'm on the outside looking in."

Although his slicked-down hair, suave suit, new set of pearly whites and team of minders reflect his changed fortunes, Potts says he's still the same guy on the inside. "Life might change but you can't allow it to change who you are." He still lives in the same Welsh town (Port Talbot) and has the same friends.

"I'll never be a supremely confident person," he says, "but now I can hold my head up high."

Jules, who's chucked in her insurance-company job to tour with him, keeps his feet on the ground, says Potts. "She knows I'm still the same pain in the ass."

But, despite finding happiness with Jules, whom he met in an internet chatroom, the year of his marriage (2003) was "to quote the Queen, my annus horribilis". In short succession Potts had appendicitis, then had a benign tumour removed from his adrenal gland and, while recuperating, was knocked off his bike and broke his collarbone. Slipping into depression, Paul was weeks away from bankruptcy when he saw an advertisement on his computer for Britain's Got Talent.

Lacking the showy looks of many recording artists almost stopped him entering. "I knew I wasn't the normal kind of person they'd be looking for, I'm not slim and I'm not young. And I always thought that to get anywhere you had to look a certain way."

So yes, he really did toss a coin to decide if he should enter. "It landed heads. If it had landed tails I wouldn't have applied. "It was one of those decisions I couldn't make for myself as I'm quite indecisive. It was a now-or-never moment for me."

The attitude he took into Britain's Got Talent was simply to do his best. Never did he expect to win, nor did he foresee a glittering career. He simply didn't expect anything. "Some things you don't have any control over, so why worry?"

As part of his prize, he performed in front of the Queen at the Royal Variety Show and got to meet her afterwards. "When I shook her hand I tried not to bow too low and end up hitting her, because I'm quite clumsy at the best of times."

Despite, or perhaps because of, Potts' clumsy side, his story has touched millions of lives - people who can relate to being down on their luck and being picked on at school. Raised in Bristol by a bus driver father and supermarket-cashier mother, he sought refuge from schoolyard bullying in his local church choir. "I'd have choir practice on Friday after school so the bullies wouldn't wait around for another hour." As an adult he performed in amateur opera, but it wasn't until the age of 32 that he took professional vocal lessons in Italy, where he was selected to perform in front of Luciano Pavarotti - now some are calling him the next Pavarotti.

Although he has had his passport stamped in 30 countries in the past two years the place he's fallen in love with is New Zealand and its "salt-of-the-earth" people. That's not just because One Chance went platinum here three times. "New Zealand was the first place outside the UK to take me into their hearts," says Potts, who performed here in 2006 and 2007 and is planning a holiday here in our summer.

During last week's flying visit, you may have seen him perform songs from Passione on the Dancing With Stars semifinal. "It was quite nerve-racking as it was my very first performance of the songs anywhere in the world." In fact we're the very first country to get our hands on Passione, released in Europe and the United States later this month. A spine-tingling mix of original material and classics, Passione features some of the most emotional songs in opera including Andrew Lloyd Webber's Memory, and a duet with New Zealander Hayley Westenra. Does he ever stop and pinch himself? "All the time, because my life had changed incredibly. I could never have forecast what's happened." And living on "gifted time" as an artist, Potts says, he's prepared for the ride to end anytime. "But right now I get to do what I love doing every day. I am the luckiest man in the world." Passione is available in stores now.