Susan Boyle HAS Talent !

LET'S hear it for the misfits: a select band of people at least half a step out of synch with the rest of the world who with every word, deed and thought dare to be different. Best of all, they are as natural in quirks and foibles as the rest of humanity is not.

People like Susan Boyle, who bravely took to a stage and was ready to be mocked and patronised by some pretty shallow, sharp-minded, showbiz cookies backed by an audience ready for a lynching.

At first it looked as if yet another lamb was being led to the slaughter: Simon Cowell rolled his eyes, Piers Morgan smirked and Amanda Holden set her face in pre-performance sympathy-mode.

As the camera panned over the audience, the only things missing were knitting needles and a guillotine.

Then the gloriously plain and perky Miss Boyle opened her mouth and the rest is, as the sheep might say, history.

On the surface, television shows such as Britain's Got Talent are what they say: a quest to give overlooked and unsung performers a crack at fame and, it is hoped, fortune.

The reality is rather different.

BGT is not about wacky, fun-loving people prepared to stick their necks out and run the risk of ridicule. It is insidious evil with a hidden message: step out of line and this is the fate that awaits.

Don't stick your neck out. Stay shtoom. Parapets protect heads. Conformity equals safety.

It is marshmallow media for the unthinking - until the likes of Susan Boyle comes along and shatters the pre-packaged myth of good looks, sophisticated charm, wit and style.

Just an ordinary, wee, middle-aged, never-been-kissed-spinster in a baggy dress with a twinkle in her eye and a singing voice that could shatter glass and splinter pigeonholes.

By the time she makes her next appearance I am in no doubt the style gurus will have set to work: the frizzy bob will have been softened, there will be a gown and girders to even out the lumps and bumps.

What won't change is her aura of danger and anarchy: the spirit of individualism that sets Susan Boyle and her like outside of the herd.

If anything, Miss Boyle - I refuse to say Ms because Miss was made for her - is a parable of our blighted, anxiety-ridden, narrow-minded times.

Like the bold, bawdy burlesque Fabia with her flouncing, double-barrelled Union Jacks or the ridiculous Ferrero Rocher man stuffing his gub in a failed attempt to beat an insane world record no-one even knew existed.

They share a common peculiarity - to be uncommon in a gray world of political correctness, moribund opinion and low expectation: where to be one-of-a-kind is dismissed as eccentricity; good enough' equals high achievement; and straight-line thinking is an evolutionary pinnacle.

It is also where Susan Boyle's hidden talent lies.

Not in a glorious voice singing its way from a brown paper bag ... but to shock herded humanity out of complacency, conceit and self-deception.