Word: talents
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...Ugly duckling stories really do not get any better than this. And Britain's Got Talent milked them for all they were worth, cutting away to eye rolls and snickering by the audience and judges before the two wow-inducing performances. (Eye rolls and snickering, of course, can be taped at any time and edited in later, but never mind.) But exactly how untutored and undiscovered were Potts, who went on to win 2007's competition and will release the CD Passione on May 5, and Boyle, who since her performance surfaced last week has become a household name...
...quite. Luciano Pavarotti, for one, had an idea about Potts. While Potts' hometown, Fishponds, is not an upscale neighborhood, he went to St. Mary's Redcliffe, one of the best non-private schools in Bristol. After he graduated with honors from university, he went on a quiz-cum-talent show hosted by Michael Barrymore and won enough money to take singing classes in Italy. There he performed for Pavarotti...
...Barrymore TV show, but didn't make the cut. Yet she took singing lessons and recorded Cry Me a River for a charity CD in 1999, the same year she made a demo tape. An observant Catholic, she often sang at church and on karaoke nights. So her talent was no surprise to her neighbors. "Everyone here knew she could sing," Jackie Russell, manager of the local pub, told the AP. "We were always saying, 'You should go in for talent competitions.'" What held Boyle back was caring for her aging parents. She entered BGT, after her mother died, because...
...Potts and Boyle are not, in short, two undiscovered singers who never got their shot at fame. Their stories are less telegenic than the one sold by Britain's Got Talent, but much more common. Thousands of singers take their shot and fail, just as these...
...their true tales are more heartening. Paul Potts and Susan Boyle each wanted to build a career on their talent, even tried to. He got stalled; she got rejected. But the same things that barred them from entering showbiz - upbringing, luck, family duty and, in this TV-driven world, looks - are what delivered them eventually to fame's main square. They had the exact qualities the reality industry knows how to package. As Cowell said to Boyle, in what may have been the most honest comment in the whole program, "I knew the minute you walked out on that stage...