Here is Susan at 22 performing on stage at a local Scottish club. She looks very young and joyful but at the same time looks like a shy young girl.

Boyle was born in Blackburn, West Lothian to Patrick, a storeman at the British Leyland factory in Bathgate, and Bridget Boyle, a shorthand typist. The youngest of four brothers and five sisters, Boyle was born when her mother was 47. The Sunday Times writes that it was a difficult birth, during which Boyle was briefly deprived of oxygen, leading to mild brain damage. She was diagnosed as having learning difficulties, which led to bullying and mockery at school.

After leaving school with few qualifications, she was employed in the kitchen of West Lothian College, and took part in government training schemes. She would visit the theatre from time to time to listen to professional singers, and in 1995, she auditioned for Michael Barrymore's My Kind of People, which was looking for contestants at the Braehead Shopping Centre in Glasgow, but she said she was too nervous to make a good impression. She took singing lessons from a voice coach, Fred O'Neil, and in 1999 she made her only previous recording, singing Cry Me a River for a charity CD funded by the local council to commemorate the Millennium.

Boyle's father died in the 1990s, and her siblings had left home, leaving Boyle to look after her aging mother, who died in 2007 at the age of 91. Boyle still lives in the family home, a four-bedroom council house, with her ten-year-old cat, Pebbles. Her mother had always encouraged her to enter local singing competitions, which she won several times, and tried to persuade her daughter to enter Britain's Got Talent, urging her to take the risk of singing in front of an audience larger than her parish church. Boyle has said she didn't feel ready to do it until after her mother's death. Her performance on the show was the first time she had sung since then.

Boyle is currently unemployed, and active as a volunteer with Our Lady of Lourdes, a church in Whitburn. She has never married, and during an interview just before she sang on the talent show, she said she had also "never been kissed," but added later, "Oh, I was just joking around. It was just banter and it has been blown way out of proportion."

Susan Boyle (born June 15, 1961)[1] is a Scottish church volunteer and amateur singer who came to public attention on April 11, 2009 when she appeared as a contestant on the third series of Britain's Got Talent.[4] Boyle leapt to almost immediate global fame when she sang "I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Misérables in the competition's first round.[5]

Before she sang, both the audience and the judges appeared to express skepticism based on her ungroomed appearance and awkwardness. In contrast, her vocal performance was so outstanding that she has been dubbed "The Woman Who Shut Up Simon Cowell".[6] She received a standing ovation from the live audience, attracting yes-votes from Cowell and Amanda Holden, and the "biggest yes I have ever given anybody" from Piers Morgan. The audition was recorded in January 2009 at the Clyde Auditorium in Glasgow, Scotland.[7]

The juxtaposition of her powerful voice with the audience's first impression of her triggered global interest. Articles about her appeared in newspapers all over the world, while online videos of her performance totalled over 50 million views within a week.[8] Cowell is reported to be setting up a contract with Boyle with his Syco Music company label, a subsidiary of Sony Music.[9]

Susan Boyle shares her dream of singing for Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, reports Elizabeth Palmer. Julie Chen talks to two of the "Britain's Got Talent" judges about the Internet sensation.