Faith Central: Susan Boyle and other faith-fuelled singers

Two schoolboys are knocking on the door of Susan Boyle’s semi-detached house when I arrive. They want her autograph but Boyle is doing a telephone interview with Fox News in New York. Once the call is over, she hurries to the door and scribbles her name on two yellow Post-it notes. “I don’t know why you need this,” she says. “You’ve known my name all your lives.”

Now the world knows Susan Boyle’s name. The 48-year-old church volunteer’s performance on Britain’s Got Talent has propelled her from obscurity to global stardom. Boyle’s powerful voice, which silenced the cynical judges and those in the audience who sneered because she wasn’t groomed or glamorous, is expected to make her wealthy beyond her modest dreams.

Video clips of Boyle’s show-stopping act have been watched on YouTube more than 26m times. She sang live via satellite on the CBS Early Show in the US, and won public support from the actress Demi Moore and her husband Ashton Kutcher. She has appeared on NBC, ABC and Dutch TV and featured in newspapers around the world. On Thursday she was invited onto the Oprah Winfrey Show. “Wow,” she says when she’s given the message about Oprah. “Put me down for that. My goodness, I'm shaking.”

Boyle ushers me into the lounge of the four-bedroom council house in the former mining village of Blackburn, West Lothian, where she was born and grew up. She is polite and friendly with just a hint of shyness, smiling beneath her beetle brows. She shared the house with her mother, Bridget, until her death two years ago. The two were extremely close. Now she lives alone with her cat, Pebbles. The room is filled with good luck cards from friends and people moved towrite after hearing her sing on television. Bundles of unopened fan mail lie on the table. One envelope is addressed to Susan Boyle, Britain’s Got Talent Singer, Scotland.

“It has been quite a week,” she says, collapsing into a seat by the window. “It has been overwhelming, a bit terrifying but it has been fun. I’m enjoying it. Most of the time it’s a good laugh.”

Although she was unprepared for the phenomenal reaction, Boyle admits that she knew her voice would surprise the judges.

“I heard people say things that weren’t very friendly. I knew what they were thinking,” she says. “I saw people laughing and I knew they were laughing at me. But I thought, well, they’ll soon shut up when they hear me sing. And they did. I’ve never thought my voice was outstanding but I’ve always known I was a good singer.”

From the opening notes of I Dreamed a Dream from Les Miserables, a song she chose because it reminded her of her mother, Boyle’s performance wiped the smirks off the faces of the audience and the incredulous judges, Piers Morgan, Simon Cowell and Amanda Holden. Afterwards Morgan, who had winced when Boyle said she wanted to a professional singer like Elaine Paige, admitted that she had been “my biggest surprise in three years of this show”.

How did that make her feel? “Pleased,” she says. “It’s what I wanted.” Did she feel patronised by the judges when they expressed such open astonishment? “No, I was happy with the way it went. They’ve all been very nice to me.”

What Boyle is less happy about is the speculation about her personal life that followed throwaway comments she made to the presenters Ant and Dec. She told them she’d never had a boyfriend and never even been kissed.

“Oh, I was just joking around,” she says, blushing. “It was just banter and it has been blown way out of proportion. I was about to go on stage and I was very nervous.

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