Editorial: Boyle's saga is far from over

Susan Boyle. Photo / AP

Opinion

The most surprising thing about the latest chapter in the story of Britain's Got Talent sensation Susan Boyle is that anyone would think it was surprising.

On the day that she wiggled her hips and silenced the audience with her rendition of I Dreamed a Dream, the messy end to the contest was prefigured: an ugly duckling turned out to be a swan and, as is the way of these things, the media pack would not rest until she had been restored to her duckling status.

Thus the tabloids - closely followed by the world's TV cameras - cooed as she wowed the audiences, then stalked her until she could take no more. They caught her behaving badly and they derided her for it. The revelation that an idol has feet of clay sells papers. Never mind that the papers it sells are the very ones that created the idol.

Such hypocrisy is the fuel that drives these dreams-come-true contests. The tabloid newspapers in Britain elevate ordinary people to star status only so that they can then attack them for their human frailty, for their ordinariness. Boyle, from the small Scottish town of Blackburn, a shy spinster with a very mild intellectual disability, was always going to be easy prey for the vultures.

This week it emerged that Boyle was suffering from exhaustion. It was a euphemism for a breakdown, the blame for which belongs to Simon Cowell, who acts as one of the contest judges, but whose company, Syco, developed the Got Talent franchise. His failure to see that Boyle would need support and minding was careless at best and cynical at worst.

Boyle's second place should not be seen as any sort of failure; her immediate future as an entertainer seems assured. But even now, she should be offered the benefit of wiser counsel which might ask: are you sure you will prefer Broadway to Blackburn?