'They called me Susie Simple', but singing superstar Susan Boyle is the one laughing now

Who's Laughing Now

Despite the common perception that she sprang from nowhere, Susan Boyle is not entirely unused to fame.

She was well known in the village where she has lived all her life as the slightly batty spinster who lived alone with her cat, Pebbles.

She adopted eccentric habits such as keeping money in an empty whisky bottle and cheerfully allowed herself to be teased by the local children on the rare occasions she ventured out of her pebbledash-fronted terrace house.

They called her Susie Bong, or Susie Simple. Now, as the world knows, Susie Simple has gone global.

It all began a few weeks ago when her rendition of I Dreamed A Dream, from the musical Les Miserables, was screened on the launch of the third series of ITV's Britain's Got Talent.

Every village has one, and 48-year-old Susan Boyle, who was born with minor brain damage and has learning difficulties, obligingly played the role to which she had been cast.

She stepped out onto the stage in a brown lace dress that bore the unmistakable stamp of 'local boutique', set off by thin black tights and tan shoes.

She announced she wanted to become the next Elaine Paige and did a hip wiggle that was mildly disturbing. The audience and judges leaned back in their chairs and prepared to be entertained, for all the wrong reasons.

By the end of the song, they were all on their feet and one of the judges, Amanda Holden, had tears in her eyes.

It was the start of the Susan Boyle phenomenon. So far, assorted clips of Boyle's performance have been watched more than 100 million times on YouTube.

Judge Simon Cowell is said to be lining up a record deal for her with his Sony BMG label (she says she can't talk about it, but is not denying it).

And America, a market even British A-list pop stars struggle to break, has gone crazy for her. She has already appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show. Cowell is predicting a number one album in the US.

" The ones who were mean to me are now nice to me "

'The ones who were mean to me are now nice to me,' Susan revealed during her interview with CBS, a reference, surely, to those people who have teased and tormented her over the years.

The video clip has also been shown on NBC's Today Show and reduced the host, Kathie Lee Gifford, to tears. Susan was also interviewed on the American breakfast show Good Morning America.

Hollywood's contribution to the Susan Boyle phenomenon came from 46-year-old actress Demi Moore and her 31-year- old husband, Ashton Kutcher.

Kutcher posted a link on the social networking site Twitter, about Susan's singing, saying 'This just made my night', and his wife replied: 'It made me teary!'

Articles have appeared in newspapers all over the world including such diverse and far-flung publications as The Washington Post, The Toronto Star and The Maldives Chronicle.

At least two Susan Boyle internet fan sites have been set up and she now has her own entry on the internet encyclopedia Wikipedia.

To cap it all, Dr Robert Canfield, Professor of Anthology at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, has published an academic essay about the Boyle phenomenon, entitled Susan Boyle And The Power Of The Moral Imagination.

'Buried within the human psyche are feelings, yearnings, anxieties too deep for words, usually,' he wrote.

'Always it is something outside ourselves that touches us, somehow, where we feel most deeply. At such moments we remember that we are humans - not merely creatures, but human beings, profoundly and deeply shaped by a moral sensibility so powerful that it breaks through our inhibitors; it can burst out, explode into public view, to our own astonishment.'

Or to put it another way: you shouldn't judge a book by its cover.

The lady who started all this off has spent most of the week at her home in Blackburn, near Bathgate, West Lothian, with Pebbles the cat, trying to make sense of it all. (Interspersed by a series of television interviews, naturally.)

'It has been an incredible week but I'm just taking baby steps, seeing where it goes,' she says.

'Singing on CBS was amazing and being given advice and encouragement by Patti LuPone was out of this world. She's a brilliant singer.'

How is she feeling at the moment, as the world goes crazy about Susan Boyle? And does she have an explanation for what has happened?

'I've been very calm and relaxed,' says Susan. 'I'm taking it in my stride. I have no explanation for it, none at all.'

Susan Boyle At Home

Susan, a devout Catholic, has lived in Blackburn all her life, and is the youngest of nine siblings (five girls and four boys).

Her mother, Bridget, was a shorthand typist before she had her children; her father, Patrick, worked as a storeman at the British Leyland factory in Bathgate.

The factory closed a few years ago, contributing to a decline in the Bathgate area. As they grew up, Susan's brothers and sisters left the family home one by one.

Most of her siblings stayed in the area, but one brother moved to Australia. Susan alone stayed with her parents. She had suffered mild brain damage after being starved of oxygen at birth.

Recalling her childhood, she said earlier this week: 'I was born with a disability and that made me a target for bullies.

'I was called names because of my fuzzy hair and because I struggled in class. I told the teachers but, because it was more verbal than physical, I could never prove anything.

'But words often hurt more than cuts and bruises and the scars are still there.'

Yet, bullied though she was, there wasn't anyone in Blackburn who could deny that Susan had an amazing voice.

She was a musical child and, at the age of 12, her mother placed her in the choir of her local Catholic church. 'I also sang in musicals at school, lots of them, I can't remember what.'

After leaving school, she became a regular on the microphone at the Happy Valley Hotel in Blackburn and performed karaoke at local pubs.

When she was 18, she took her one and only job as a trainee cook in the kitchens of West Lothian College.

'It was a six-month contract and then it stopped,' she says, suggesting that she is not as talented at cookery as she is at singing.

Ever since then, she has done voluntary work, on and off, helping the elderly, supported by her parents. She did not move out of the family home, and she did not go out on dates.

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