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www.celtic-connection.com
MAY 2009
In Defence of Susan Boyle -Even though she shouldn't need one
By
I HARRY I McGRATH
EDINBURGH - The Happy Valley Hotel isn't really a hotel. Nor is it in a valley.
It is happy though, and the kind of place where everybody knows your name and your tipple.
It's forenoon but there's a steady flow of customers, each one greeted by manager Jackie Russell who pours drinks before they're asked for.
The only drinkers she doesn't know are photographer Graeme Murdoch and me, but she understands why we're here.
The Happy Valley has hosted more exotic visitors than us in the last wee while. "They come fae aw o'er the place" says one of our new bar-propping friends.
They come from all over the place because this is the bar where Susan Boyle sings karaoke. Graeme and I haven't come far at all, but it was a calumnious headline in a newspaper 7,000 kilometres away that convinced me to ask him along on the short trip from Edinburgh to the village of Blackburn, West Lothian.
"Susan Boyle: Has the world been conned?" was the banner on the most popular story in the Vancouver Sun.
It then morphed to "Susan Boyle: Have we all been hoodwinked?" and "Susan Boyle: Fact or fiction?"
The headline writer's narrative bears no resemblance to what we are being told in the Happy Valley Hotel Bar on a grey Tuesday morning. "We all knew she could sing," says the guy drinking beside us. "Susan's a beautiful person", adds Jackie, "what you see is what you get."
One of our new friends offers to guide us to Susan's house which is a short walk from the bar.
Halfway there he peels off, waves, and says "It's doon by that blue wheelie bin. Ah probably shouldnae be daen this." We shouldn't be doing it either but we wander down anyway.
The Boyle house is easily recognized by the new fence around it, erected by the local council for the world to admire, and the line up of paparazzi, or "scumbags in cheap rental cars" as Graeme aptly describes them, on the road outside it. Somewhat shamefaced, we take a picture and hurry back to the bar.
Safe in the Happy Valley again, Jackie tells us that Susan has phoned to say she won't be coming to this week's karaoke because
PHOTO CREDIT: Graeme Murdoch Cultural Connect Scotland
THE BAR AREA in the Happy Valley Hotel.
PHOTO CREDIT: Graeme Murdoch Cultural Connect Scotland
HARRY MCGRATH with Jackie Russell, manager of the Happy Valley Hotel Bar.
"Susans a beautiful person.... what you see is what you get."
"they're worried that somebody might record her and sell it on." One of the drinkers says that Susan's brothers want her to quit the show because "they're worried for her."
The people in the bar worry about Susan too. "The whole village was upset when they made fun of her on the show [Britain's Got Talent]," Jackie says, "but really proud when she started to sing."
And this seems to us to be the nub of it - Susan has restored the voice of a community which for the last 80 years has had to fight to be heard.
Blackburn is a former mining village and close to Bathgate where the British Leyland car plant employed up to 6,000 people until it closed in 1986.
The song Letter from America by Scottish group The Proclaimers linked the people made redundant by the closure to the victims of the highland clearances of a previous era
PHOTO CREDIT: Graeme Murdoch Cultural Connect Scotland
HARRY MCGRATH in front of Susan Boyle's house - note new fence.
("Bathgate no more... Xochaber no more").
Mining and then British Leyland provided mass employment here and when the car plant closed Blackburn had to pick up the pieces.
As in all places thus afflicted, the village has some social problems but it also has a fierce community pride. Jackie tells us how upset she is by an Associated Press report that went out across North America.
It claimed that Susan sang in the Happy Valley on a beer stained carpet, between slot machines, and
next door to a rundown liquor store.
Jackie points to her single slot machine, highlights her pristine tartan carpet and asks us if we can see a liquor store outside (we can't). In an echo of the Proclaimers' song, she says her sister in America keeps her updated on what the media is saying there about Susan and about Blackburn.
We ask Jackie when it will all be over. "It'll be over when it's finished," she says, which just about sums it up. Few media reports noticed that Susan's meteoric rise to fame coincided with Sony's BMG label dropping Leon Jackson who won the X Factor, a show closely related to Britain's Got Talent, at the end of 3007.
Leon is from Whitburn, another former mining village and only a few miles away. They have high hopes for Susan here, but they also know how these things work.
A Scottish tabloid just published a video of a previous audition she had for the Michael Barrymore show where the ghastly host rolls around on the stage while she is singing.
And if, as the Vancouver Sun story asserts, it was mock-surprise that the Britain's Got Talent judges displayed when they heard her voice, it is harder to believe that the smirks and rolling eyes with which some audience members greeted her appearance were arranged in advance.
Strangely, adults are now mimicking the small group of Blackburn kids who, the people in the bar tell us, once made fun of Susan Boyle. "It never bothered her" says Jackie, "she just got on with it."
We buy two pints and Jackie rings them into the till below a photocopied poster that says "Blackburn loves Susan" on it. They are the cheapest pints we've bought in months, the price unaffected by the bar's sudden international fame.
"We don't take money for anything" says Jackie. "Sometimes I ask them to put something in the children's charity box on the bar. Last week an American woman put in £10."
Later I watch avideo of Susan calmly answering questions fired at her by an unctuous and embarrassing Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America and begin to wonder if the only people to emerge from this with their dignity intact will be Susan Boyle and her friends in Blackburn.
The last influx into Blackburn "fae aw oe'r the place" were the families who came to work at British Leyland. Many of these were from the West of Scotland and some, like Susan's parents, from Ireland.
They brought their churches and their football teams with them and they are still here.
Jackie wants us to come back later in May when Rangers play Celtic so that we can see how both sets of fans watch the game together in the Happy Valley and how well they get along.
"Lots of banter, but never any trouble," one of the drinkers explains. Perhaps the Vancouver Sun will send people over to see how it all works instead of writing headlines from far away.
The older guys in the pub can tell them about Alfie Conn who played for both teams. And Graeme and I will be happy to buy the pints.
SUSAN BOYLE at her audition on Britain's Got Talent.
Reality TV star Susan Boyle gets dream offer
EDINBURGH - Susan Boyle, the 47-year-old unemployed Scotswoman who brought down the roof April 11 on the reality television talent show Britain's Got Talent, may perform with her idol, singer Elaine Paige.
Just before her jawdropping performance on the opening night of the show's third season, Boyle, a frumpy church volunteer from Blackburn, Scotland, told skeptical judges that her dream was to become a professional singer as successful as Paige.
Paige (60), a veteran performer who played Eva Peron in the original London production oiEvita, gave a vote of support for Boyle on her weekly BBC Radio 2 program on April 17 saying, "It seems her performance has captured the hearts of everyone who saw it, me included ... it looks like I have competition! Perhaps we should record a duet?"
She said that since Boyle's performance, her Radio 2 inbox has been flooded with email messages. She added that Boyle is "a role model for everyone who has a dream."
Paige is just the latest in a string of celebrities who have endorsed Boyle, including singer Patti LuPone and actress Demi Moore who said on Twitter that Boyle's performance reduced her to tears.
Boyle's fame has been almost instantaneous. Her April 11 performance has so far attracted 25 million YouTube viewers. Fan pages have been created on Facebook and MySpace. And her appearances on Larry King Live, Good Morning America, NBC and CBS have fuelled demand for an album.
Despite a flood of tempting showbusiness offers, Boyle is reluctant to discuss future appearances or recording contracts. "It's too early for things like that. I'm just taking baby steps until I see how I do in the competition," she told The Guardian.
Britain's Got Talent will decide a winner on May 30.