Susan Boyle – The dream turns nightmare

Is Susan Boyle now paying the price for presuming, as a middle-aged woman “with learning difficulties”, to join in with a mainstream competition or, asks Amie Slavin, is she merely reacting in an entirely natural and understandable way to an extraordinary experience

As the media fall over themselves in the race to expert status regarding the possible effects of natal oxygen deprivation on the typical Britain’s Got Talent hopeful, isn’t it time we pause to ponder whose vulnerabilities “SuBo” has really touched on?

The media version of her supposed misdemeanours begins with a little physical theatre on stage, followed by a gracious and dignified withdrawal to the seclusion of her hotel room, where the pressure and anticlimax of the entire competition finally caught up with her and she cried – a lot.

If only she were “normal”, how much better she would have coped. The music business is, after all, known for the impeccable behaviour of its star performers. It’s not like any popular singer has ever gone so far as to damage hotel property, for instance, is it?

The pressure of weeks in the limelight, without her closest friend, Pebbles the cat, finally broke over her with such force that she fainted. This resulted, somewhat dramatically, in her admission to the Priory Clinic, where she cried for Pebbles, flapped her arms at her handlers and, most distressingly, according to one Sun source, kept talking to herself, and then went quiet.

Heaven keep that source from ever popping round mine, if he/she is so easily distressed!

Who has never felt isolated, anxious, homesick or overwhelmed by the loneliness of the crowded room? Who, other than rhino-skinned show-biz hacks, that is?

Susan wasn’t even allowed to weep in her bedroom, unobserved. Is it any wonder that, with adrenalin congealing with disappointment, triumph and exhaustion, and surrounded by screeching, flapping meejah indispensables, the urge came upon her to physically prevent them from invading her personal space?

The first truth about this is that, having exploited her allotted 15 minutes of fame, the day after the final the media were preparing for the feeding frenzy of the SuBo backlash.

The second, more sinister truth, in my view, is that the usual jealousy of celebrity was, on this occasion, exacerbated by Susan’s unforgivable crimes of being nearly fifty, fat and frumpy, with a disability. If we, as a society, find other people’s good fortune hard to stomach at the best of times, then how much worse for the viewing public to watch someone achieve stellar success without glamour and “with learning difficulties?”

A society that resists defining us by any other means than our disabilities, reserves the right to beat us over the head with them, if we show signs of forgetting our place.