By now even Zaire must be rapt over Susan Boyle, the 47-year-old Scottish matron who'd never been kissed until the day she tramped into view of a huge Britain's Got Talent audience and made out big time, stunning the judges and making many automatically cynical assholes in the audience rethink their positions on what it might take to be a star. In her appropriately-chosen I Had a Dream from Les Mis, the vibrato may have been a little uncertain but otherwise it was like asking a man in the street to do a quadruple axel and then seeing it pulled off almost flawlessly.

Suddenly the world had a new idol. It may be true, as a friend said, that the world's tears were explainable to "reverse sexism." Mega-offers poured in almost instantaneously, and just as surely, the grooming sharks sensed something in the water, something that could surely spell the end for Susan Boyle, if she acted on it.

Let's hope Susan hangs onto the unibrow, the dumpy if decent style of dress, the touching humility about herself. Isn't the usual stardom glamour routine a little boring by now? A little done? Remember, she's almost 48. It was the argument that naked talent needs.
— Lloyd Dykk