KEY POINTS:
If Paul Potts wan't such a poppet, I might have been tempted to throttle him. This is because he says the same things, over and over and most of these things he's so fond of saying are platitudes.
"I'm just me," he says, and, "I'm just who I am."
He says these things, oh, at least a thousand times and that's not counting all the times he's said them to other people. Other favourites are, "I just do feel incredibly privileged to be doing what I love doing," and, "I'm just taking one day at a time."
It happens that all of these sentiments are true, and I know why he's saying them - he's trying to hang on to some idea of who he is.
This sounds like a mad thing to say, and as meaningless as his little mantras when you put them down on paper. It is true that listening to somebody say, "I'm just me," can be maddening. Towards the end I shouted: "Who are you then?" so loudly I gave myself a fright.
He didn't mind. He just giggled. Another thing he says is, "this is bonkers" and so, if your life is bonkers, being shouted at by a journalist in a posh hotel suite is probably just more of the same.
You try to put his life down on paper and end up thinking: If you were Paul Potts you too would feel as though you were living in some bonkers fairy tale world. And so you might well think, "I pinch myself every morning." And then you might say it, a number of times, to every person you sat in a room with who was trying to make sense of what has happened to your life.
If you don't know who Paul Potts is, you are not one of the (at last count) 10,099,775 people who have gone to YouTube and looked at his audition for the TV show Britain's Got Talent.
You would have to be a very hard-hearted person not to have been moved by his mournful, hopeful face; his lopsided, almost smile, the one he's worn for years to cover up his terrible teeth; his £35 ($98) suit from Tesco's. By the crying judge; the studio audience getting to their feet. By the bastard judge Simon Cowell's initial sighs at the idea of this funny little man being able to sing opera, then by watching him being utterly won over by the funny little man singing Puccini's Nessun Dorma.
Nice back story, too.
Potts is the working-class bloke whose dad was a bus driver and whose mum still works as a supermarket cashier. He is the mobile phone manager who went on to win the show, and £100,000 and a million-quid recording contract. His album, One Chance, recorded the week after his June 17 win, has sold around 300,000 in Britain; 30,000 here.
Now here he is, in a posh hotel in Auckland. He's come from Hong Kong; he'll go on to Australia. In April he's back for a concert tour. He's been to the States and Oslo.
He flew for the first time, to Canada, in 2000, economy class. Now he's staying in hotels where when you pick up your glass of water to take to another room, a man takes it from you, puts it on a silver tray and carries it along behind you. He is not very comfortable with being waited on. "I'm just me."
He looks a bit more kempt than he did when he was audition number 31829 in Cardiff. He's had some temporary work done on the worst of those terrible teeth and he has to keep saying he's not going to get Hollywood gnashers. He's got a nice pin-striped suit that obviously didn't come from Tesco's. But he's still a funny little round fellow who still hasn't got used to being able to smile without pulling his lips down over his teeth to cover them.
"I. I. Just. It's just," he said, or tried to say, a lot. He has trouble getting whole sentences out, not because he's inarticulate, but because he doesn't yet have the words to describe what his life's become. Which is this: "I just still can't believe that I'm on the other side of the world and that people are interested in me."
Now, of course, people want him to be interesting. "I think you either are or you aren't." And which is he? "I don't know! That's for other people to make their mind up about. It's not for me to say but I think if you tried making yourself something you're not, then you spend your life pretending. And I'm not very good at pretending."
Perhaps because he's still surprised at the interest he doesn't seem to mind the invasions. Yes, he met his wife on an internet site - in a chat room, not a dating site, he says. "It's the modern equivalent of pen pals." A tiny sigh. "A lot of people have them."
Yes, some people have written nasty things about his voice; about his populist appeal. "Puccini was accused of writing for the box office."
He is supposed to be here selling his album, and himself. He did a completely lousy job of selling the album. He didn't even mention it until I asked about sales, and then all he said was that he'd heard "mutterings that it had gone double platinum here".
He says he hasn't been given any media training. He says the first thing Simon Cowell said after he won was: "Don't change." He has taken this to heart. He's not silly. He's got a degree in "quite a mouthful: Philosophy, theology, film and TV studies". What did he want to be? "A retail manager. Which is what I ended up being."
He doesn't try to charm and so manages to, in his awkward, nervous way. He gave me a tentative kiss on the cheek, which he botched rather, as I left. He'll probably get better at all that as he goes along, but not too much better you hope. He's nervous now, he says. "You can always tell because I'm fidgeting with my ear."
His record company obviously needs him to be a star, because stars sell albums, but they've made the right call with Potts. They leave him alone. They don't sit in on interviews. His nervousness, and his engaging willingness to point out that he's nervous - there he is, fiddling with his ear again - is partly his selling point. You couldn't manage that out of him. This is a strange experience. For him, obviously, but also for me. The weeping lady judge said he was "a frog who will turn into a prince." This is what happens in fairy tales and I don't think Potts believes in fairy tales. Even when he's living one.
He is a cautious person and, despite what people think, he is not yet, not even close to being, a millionaire.
But we, having been sold the story, want him to behave like a prince. The idea of the reluctant celebrity is nothing new, obviously, but meeting this one is like watching someone looking at their life from a disbelieving distance.
Oh, go on, he must have splashed a bit of money about. He bought his wife Julz some earrings and a bracelet for her birthday. Diamonds? "There were diamonds in it, but they weren't hugely expensive. You know, we're not materially minded at all."
Nice suit. "Oh, this is not mine. It's just one that's been supplied by Sony. It's a costume. It's work wear. It's not mine."
He is, I suggest, watching this other person having a rather peculiar life which, like the suit, is not his. "I've always had that approach to myself."
He says, a bit later, "I tend to be very quiet. I live inside my head a bit." He says he was a lonely boy; he didn't have many friends. He was bullied at school "for being different". He says he's still a bit different but he doesn't know how to explain in what way. Which makes sense because if you were being bullied for being different and you knew why you were different, you could try to change the way you were.
Now, of course, not changing is a point of honour. And, I think, he has become superstitious about not changing. He hasn't quit his job. He's on "a six-month career break".
"One thing I'm quite conscious of is, yeah, my life's changed. I don't deny my life's changed, but it can so easily change back. I'm very conscious of the fact that nobody owes me a future."
You can see why he's determined to go on believing that. One moment he's the man in a bad suit, on a clip on a website, the next, whoosh, like magic, here he is.
How very odd to meet the man from the YouTube clip in a hotel suite in Auckland, I said when he walked in. "Oh," he said, "am I disappointing?"
No, not a bit - unless you wanted to meet a frog who turned into a prince and instead you got a poppet.
- NZ HERALD STAFF
