Another Paul Potts Moment - Susan Boyle, Britain's Got Talent

[Joe Shaw]

I believe it was John who posted the link to the Paul Potts You Tube at Britain's Got Talent ...

Here's another ... this time it's Susan Boyle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

I keep thinking as I'm watching this that no matter what else happens in her life from now on ... she'll always have these few minutes on that stage.

Joe

[Tero]

Just goes to show that real talent does definitely NOT go hand in hand with looks.

[Other Means]

My sister was going on about her. Amazing. Probably one of the best voices I've ever heard. You've got to wonder why she's waited so long.

She looks like the Gruffalo and sings like an angel.

[dieseltaylor]

Very pleasing for several reasons : )

[gautrek]

Its just a shame that lying disgraced twat Peirs Morgan has become such a star with these shows.I just wish lying twats like him would just crawl away and hide with shame under a rock somewhere.But no he gets friends with Cowell and all of a sudden he is all over the TV.What the f*** does he know about talent.

Good i hate that twat.

Clarkson had the best idea.Bunch the w******.

[Other Means]

I feel slimy just watching Peirs Morgan. I want to kick his smug, lying face off.

[gautrek]

I feel slimy just watching Peirs Morgan. I want to kick his smug, lying face off.

I think him and B'Liar are twins.

How much has B'liar made since he left office.

£17 million.

doing what?

talking for f*** sake.

The worlds gone mad.

[dieseltaylor]

Yep criminals the pair of them.

[Tero]

I think him and B'Liar are twins.

How much has B'liar made since he left office.

£17 million.

doing what?

talking for f*** sake.

The worlds gone mad.

I hear people have made hundreds of millions doing nothing but singing. !?! Imagine that !!!

[gautrek]

I hear people have made hundreds of millions doing nothing but singing. !?! Imagine that !!!

Yes but at least they have a talent and haven't lied through their teeth.

I'm sorry but i have no time for people like B'liar or Morgan.They are only interested in themselves.

[dieseltaylor]

I imagine most singers do not have blood on their hands.

And of course many singers have recognisable talent though I do agree the world is a little loopy in the way "stars" are made/paid.

FI driver on £15M a year - but then if you can only enter two cars you would want the best. But what kind of business can afford tha kind of lunacy ... oh yes "entertainment".

B'liar's fame rests on him being image shaped as a wise leader. Of course presiding over a mad unsustainable boom in the UK, and lying to take the UK into an unjust war, are minor detractions. His elevation of spin to an art form and suborning of the civil service should not be despised.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5136856/Blair-Incorporated.html

PAUL GROVER

As Tony Blair soaked up the applause of an adoring Filipino audience at the end of his latest paid speaking engagement last month, a startling statistic must surely have popped into his head. In the space of just 30 minutes, Mr Blair had earned £183,000 – the same as his salary as prime minister.

Put another way, he earned £6,000 per minute for addressing a 2,000-strong audience in Manila, making him far and away the highest-paid public speaker on the planet.

And the lectures, where Mr Blair delivers such pearls of wisdom as "politics really matters, but a lot of what goes on is not great", are only a small part of his vast earnings, which could very well net him a staggering £80 million by the time he reaches retirement age in 10 years' time.

Welcome to Blair Incorporated, a money-making machine like no other in the history of former political leaders.

No other retired statesman, not even Mr Blair's old buddy Bill Clinton, has made so much cash so quickly after leaving office.

Between them, Mr Blair and his wife Cherie have banked close to £18 million in the two years since they moved out of Downing Street, with no sign of any let-up in their earning power.

Such is the demand for Mr Blair's services on the international speaking circuit that there is a two-year waiting list for bookings, and Max Markson, the colourful Australian PR man who has worked with the likes of Nelson Mandela and Mr Clinton, described him as "one of the biggest stars in the world".

Mr Blair, 55, is certainly acting the part. He has assembled a global empire with its headquarters in a smart four-storey office in Grosvenor Square and outlying offices in America, Africa and the Middle East.

At the last count, Mr Blair employed 82 people to run his ventures; a religious foundation, charities raising money for sport, Africa and to halt climate change, and of course his permanent office at the American Colony hotel in Jerusalem, where he is an international envoy to the Palestinian territories.

And to shuttle between his activities, Mr Blair (who was so cruelly denied the presidential-style personal airliner he craved during his time in office) has taken to renting a Gulfstream V executive jet, which costs up to £80,000 for a typical three-day round trip.

Like any chief executive, he travels with a gaggle of aides, who often include the ever-loyal Ruth Turner, his former Downing Street "gatekeeper" who was arrested (but not charged) during the cash for honours investigation, and who heads up his US office based at Yale University.

Incredible as it may seem for a man who portrayed himself as the champion of the disenfranchised, £80,000 is small change to Mr Blair, thanks to the speaking tours, which rake in around £2.5 million per year, advisory roles with Zurich and JP Morgan Chase, which bring in another £2.5 million and his latest venture, advising other leaders on good governance, for which he charges around £1 million per contract.

Nor has Mrs Blair been letting the grass grow under her piggy bank.

Having earned a £1 million advance for her autobiography, /Speaking For Myself/, she has continued with her second career as a public speaker, banking around £25,000 per engagement, mostly through trips to America.

Her appearances this year will include a speech at the Institute of Travel and Tourism conference in Dubai in June. Mrs Blair's experience of holiday hunting may have been limited in recent years by her uncanny ability to conjure numerous stays at the exotic homes of acquaintances such as Cliff Richard and Robin Gibb, but the conference organisers have assured paying delegates that: "Cherie has some knowledge of the travel industry as her mother was a travel agent for Lewis's department store in Liverpool."

As Cherie Booth QC, she has also carried on with her legal career, picking up one of her most high-profile cases to date after being retained by two local authority pension funds to prepare a joint action against Sir Fred Goodwin and Royal Bank of Scotland in the American courts.

Conservative estimates suggest the case will keep her earnings from legal work above £100,000 a year. Mrs Blair also sits as a part-time judge for 15 days a year for the standard daily fee of £575.

Her impressive workload has also included lucrative appearances on Channel 4: she was paid £10,000 for presenting a one-hour documentary on the future of Christianity last month, and received slightly more for chairing a series on street weapons last year. She also has an occasional column in/ The Times/, which pays around £1,000 a time.

The Blairs need all the money they can get their hands on, with mortgages on four properties in London, Buckinghamshire, Bristol and Durham totalling almost £9 million and more than 80 staff between them, whose combined wages are likely to top £2.5 million per year.

Yet there are increasing signs that Mr Blair is prepared to give up some of his lucrative outside interests – temporarily at least – by becoming the first full-time president of the European Union as and when the role is created.

Mr Blair, who sees himself as uniquely placed to build a bridge between Europe and the Obama administration, held private talks with the European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, in Brussels last week while the world was focusing on the G20 summit in London.

As well as sounding out Mr Barroso for support, Mr Blair has reportedly talked Gordon Brown around to backing him, and the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, is also understood to have told Mr Blair he would have his vote.

At the beginning of this year, when I last spoke to Blair's biographer, Anthony Seldon, about rumours that Blair was interested in the presidency, Prof Seldon dismissed the suggestion out of hand, saying the former premier had no appetite for European bureaucracy.

Since then, however, he has revised his opinion.

"I now think he might well want to do it," Dr Seldon told me from his study at Wellington College. "My sense is that he is finding it harder to operate as a freelance diplomat than he thought it would be. It's harder to get influence without an official position, and with each passing month his contacts and his inside knowledge decline, his name declines – he is a declining asset. So it may make more sense to him to come inside an office that has a standing and operate from there.

"His earning power might go down in the time he was doing it, as he would have to give up some of his activities, but people have always made the mistake of thinking he is a man obsessed by money. He is not that kind of person, though he may have acquired the habits of the rich. On a personal level, I don't think a drop in income would worry him."

Cherie Blair may react with horror to the thought of her husband giving up some of his earnings for a job that will pay just £200,000 a year (the equivalent of 33 minutes' work for Mr Blair at the moment).

But Mrs Blair would be able to console herself with the knowledge that after completing a two-and-a-half-year term as EU President (or even the maximum of five years), her husband would be a more bankable asset than ever on the worldwide lecture circuit.

*Tony Blair’s earnings since leaving office in June 2007:*

Þ Speaking fees: £2.5 million per annum

Þ Advance for memoirs: £4.6 million

Þ Advisory role with JPMorgan Chase: £2 million pa

Þ Advisory role with Zurich financial services: £500,000 pa

Þ Contract to advise Kuwaiti leaders on good governance: £1 million

Þ Prime Ministerial pension: £63,468

Þ Allowance for private office: £84,000

*Total to June 2009: £15,894,936*

*Outgoings:*

Þ Mortgages: £384,000 pa

Þ Staff wages: £2.4 million

Þ Office rental: £550,000 pa

Þ Gulfstream V jet rental: £500,000 pa

*Total: £7,668,000*

*Cherie Blair’s earnings since June 2007:*

Þ Advance for autobiography: £1 million

Þ Speaking fees: £200,000 pa

Þ Legal work: £100,000 pa

Þ Court fees for sitting as crown court recorder: £8,625 pa

Þ Fee for Channel 4 programme on Christianity: £10,000

Þ Fee for Channel 4 series on street weapons: £15,000

Þ Articles in The Times: £2,000

*Total to June 2009: £1,644,250*

*Outgoings:*

Þ Mortgages: £20,400 pa

Þ Staff wages: £140,000 pa

Þ Council tax: £5,507 pa

Þ Household expenditure: £60,000 pa

*Total: £444,164*

* Some figures are approximate

[gautrek]

I could go on.

Sharon Osborne is famous because?

Jack Osborne is famous because?

Jade Goodie was famous for what?

Oh thats right being a thick racist twat.

Jonathan Ross is worth 6 million a year because?

I don't know.You tell me as i can't see why.

Chris Moyles is worth half a million a year because?

Oh thats right he climbs a mountain for charity and the following weekend when he is big news for doing it he is all over Channel 4 promoting his new show.

Ronan Keating climbs a mountain for charity and funnily enough has new album out at the same time.

Funny that Ronan Keating was one of the guests on Moyles new show.

Bono keeps banging on about poverty.

well give them some of your money you twat.

[John Kettler]

Joe Shaw,

Made my sleep deprived night! Her performance gave me goose bumps and left me misty eyed. Hugely appreciate your posting the link!

Regards,

John Kettler

[gunnergoz]

Sharon Boyle is definitely the hero of the moment in my house and consequently also in Ukraine where our relatives and friends greeted the re-post we sent them, with much applause and happiness. Everyone loves an underdog, most especially the other underdogs. I just hope the lady can keep her character and values through the coming months, which will surely have enough weirdness to try a saint.

[Stalins Organ]

How long for tho?

It is presumably much easier to find amazing voices like hers now & once another few come out of the woodwork will she be newsworthy any more?

What happens to her then? How long until the dream is over for her?

hopefully she'll be able to cash up in hte meantime tho.......

[JonS]

What happens then? Does it matter?

I keep thinking as I'm watching this that no matter what else happens in her life from now on ... she'll always have these few minutes on that stage.

[gunnergoz]

The point is, she seized her moment and ran with it. What happens later is almost irrelevant. But I do hope that she can keep it together, not compromise who she is and reap the rewards of her life's work. Is that too much to hope for?

[Tero]

By gunnergoz

The point is, she seized her moment and ran with it. What happens later is almost irrelevant.

I wish they had shown during the performance the faces of those in the audience who scorned her before she sang.

But I do hope that she can keep it together, not compromise who she is and reap the rewards of her life's work. Is that too much to hope for?

If she makes it I fear a few years from now she has had the set of usual nip/tuck/lipo/reconstrucktive plastic operations. Then again, not being American she might be secure enough not to go through all that.

Incidentaly: what is it with the British actors being cast in lead roles in all sorts of American soaps (Greys Anatomy, Life, House) these day ?

And some of the veteran actors (well, mostly actresses) in the same shows seem more like left over extras from Planet of the Apes with all their Botox and plastic enhanced looks.

[dieseltaylor]

You nailed it Tero. US actors with Botox can no longer show facial expressions - other than surprise : )

[gunnergoz]

(snip)

Incidentaly: what is it with the British actors being cast in lead roles in all sorts of American soaps (Greys Anatomy, Life, House) these day ?

Many in the colonies mistakenly equate a British accent with a superior being, worthy of adulation.

Or, as was mentioned, it could just be the botox...

Did I ever mention that I don't watch commercial TV? What I know of it I learn in forums like this, or other mentions in the web. I'm afraid that if I watch it, my brain will rot at an advanced rate...So I really don't know.

[dieseltaylor]

To be honest in some of the trashy US offerings it seems to me that the plots are incredibly stupid, and the actors to over-emote so that even the thickest of the audience can understand what is going on.

Pandering to the lowest level does tend to lose the upper percentiles . In any event I think one would have to be moronic to put up with all the adverts. I assume there are places like PSB where you can watch for a whole hour or more without being interrupted.!1?

When people realise how much of their lives are being wasted with adverts ...... it almost makes spam look respectable because it is easier to get through.

[gunnergoz]

What bothers me is that I have to subscribe to all sorts of cable TV crap to get the few documentary and news channels that I do watch a few times a week - not to mention that I also have Dish Network to get the 4 or 5 Ukrainian and Russian channels for my wife and mother in law to watch - a ton of money for what? 95% I don't watch at all.

On the other hand, when I visit friends and family in Ukraine, they have satellite there that brings in (at last count) over 1,000 channels from all over the world. Sure, some is porn, some pay per view and some subscription, but probably over half is free. And it's interesting. So why can't I do that here? But nooooo...I have to be force fed the same crap that the mindless bots down the block want; American Idol or some "reality" fantastic bilge.

US media sucks, mostly. Feh.