Susan Boyle, Singer, Shocks World on Britain's Got Talent

You no doubt have heard this story, which is a great one, a true underdog one - but just in case...it's worth repeating! First, here is the clip heard around the world.

Here is the background:

Less than a week ago, she was just another 47-year-old Scottish virgin.

Now, more than 13 million YouTube views later, Hollywood agents and talk-show bookers are jostling for a few minutes with Susan Boyle, a stocky, beetle-browed woman who would not ordinarily rate a second glance on the street.

It may all add up to only a momentary big deal, but the case of this previously unknown amateur singer is a compelling study in how viral video can lather its subject into frothy international stardom within hours.

On Saturday's season premiere of " Britain's Got Talent," a U.K. show in which " American Idol's" Simon Cowell is one of the judges, Boyle was, from the moment she stepped onstage, perhaps the most unlikely star since Marie Dressler, the frumpy 1930s movie heroine.

Boyle told producers that she was a virgin. "Never been kissed," she confided on-camera. "Shame! But it's not an advert." She invoked as her idol the British musical theater star Elaine Paige. When she stated her age and the audience groaned, Boyle ground her ample hips and blurted: "And that's just one side of me!"

A close-up showed Piers Morgan, another judge familiar to U.S. viewers from "America's Got Talent," wincing.

The crowd seemed to be expecting another colorful character with no discernible talent, in the style of former "American Idol" contestant William Hung.

Amanda Holden, the program's third judge, e-mailed on Thursday: "When she came onto stage the audience immediately started booing and hissing her, based purely on her appearance. She looked a little odd [and] was a bit nervous and searching for her words."

"We were laughing at her," Morgan said in a phone interview Wednesday. "She was someone who seemed to be completely deluded."

Until she started to sing. Boyle, who had some limited previous vocal training and then mostly in church choirs, shrewdly picked "I Dreamed a Dream," a heartbreaking ballad about unfulfilled dreams from the hit musical "Les Misérables." A few bars into the song, as her earthy, pleasing voice took command and soared over the auditorium, the crowd could be heard letting out a collective gasp, then starting to cheer raucously.

Boyle's is already the most-watched clip this month on YouTube, more than doubling the total views of its runner-up.

Both performers are classic underdogs, nonthreatening people who, in pursuing long-held dreams, managed to triumph over easily understood disadvantages. While many Americans normally wouldn't be fascinated by a previously obscure contestant on a British TV show, that story is familiar and has particular resonance in this country.

"Americans can be very moved by this sort of thing," Morgan said. "She is Rocky Balboa, if you will."

> Read more at the LA Times

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