Age Liberation: Susan Boyle, ‘Grumpy Old Women’ and Virginia Ironside’s Monologues

Abstract

In 2009 contestant Susan Boyle on ITV1’s Britain’s Got Talent became an overnight household name. Posted on YouTube, her audition for the programme (broadcast on 11 April), for which she sang ‘I Dreamed a Dream’ from the stage show Les Misérables, had millions of hits.¹ From being an invisible nobody, she became a highly visible, globally recognised somebody. The rags to riches narrative of talent shows or their pop star equivalents like The X Factor are generically encoded. The idea that ordinary people can get to live the celebrity dream is what underpins the shows’ huge appeal for contestants and spectators alike. Hence, in one sense there is nothing remarkable about the media frenzy surrounding contestants: this is only to be expected in the production of reality TV stars. However, in Boyle’s case the media attention was extraordinary and highly remarkable in a way that singled her out from other overnight-celebrity figures.