Stress gets to Susan Boyle at Heathrow

by Annie Scott on

With all the regulation shifts, evacuations and the recent terror attempt on Christmas Day, it’s a stressful time to fly.

Stress affects all of us; passengers, airport staff, pilots and yes, even superstars. Perhaps it was stress that got to Britain’s Got Talent prodigy Susan Boyle at Heathrow Airport on Tuesday.

According to HolyMoly, Boyle suffered a complete mental breakdown in the British Airways lounge. She grabbed a mop from a cleaner and began using it as a microphone, then polished other lounge guests’ shoes with it. BA employees reportedly tried to stop her, and she took off running, eventually bursting through the doors of the usually-peaceful lounge screaming “I’ve escaped! I’ve escaped!”

“A BA official had to sit with the singer until she regained composure and boarded the flight to Chicago,” reports HolyMoly, adding that the singer is heading to the US to appear on Oprah. Chelsea Handler mentioned this week on Chelsea Lately that the star is also working on a line of Susan Boyle products like t-shirts and mugs. While the TV circuit and souvenir development are normal celebrity activities, stress may be piling up on Boyle, who has a history of mental illness and has become very famous very fast.

If this were any other celebrity, we’d assume it was drugs — and we’d probably be fed a bogus story about a bad reaction to a sleeping medication. We wonder how the Boyle PR camp will spin this.

Susan Boyle: The Global Ambassador of Good Will

by Jamie Rhein on

If there ever was a Global Ambassador of Good Will, Susan Boyle, the woman who has wowed the world from her “Britain’s Got Talent” performance is it.

Ever since I saw the video, I’ve been enamored. First, there’s the song. Who hasn’t dreamed a dream of days gone by? The first time I saw “Les Miserables” I was living in Singapore. That musical seemed to seep into my pores. Hearing Susan Boyle sing reminded me of my first impressions, but more importantly, about what I think most world travelers know.

The world is filled with astounding people who surprise you when you have time to absorb the nuances of their lives. It might be the shopkeeper who puts fruit on a scale with a certain hand movement and a smile–or the way a woman sweeps a sidewalk in the early morning. It could be the way a group of school kids throw their arms around each other and tilt their heads back in laughter when they ask you your name. It could be that woman who could be age 40 to 80 who scoots over to make room for you to sit down on a bench. It’s hard to tell how old she is because her days are spent out in fields in the sun and wind. There’s something about the way she sits and how kind she behaves that is alluring.

Those people that attract us to them might be wearing threadbare clothes, have a tooth or two missing, and not have a decent pair of shoes, if any, but there is an essence about them that travel with us long after our taxi or bus has pulled away. When we go through our photos, we look for them–, and if we didn’t have our camera, wish that we had just in case the good feeling could be absorbed into a photograph so that we would have a prop to help us recall it at will.

Watching an inteview with Susan Boyle is a peek into a normal person’s life–the woman who might live in the house down the block or in the apartment on the third floor. She’s the one with the cat whose life seems to move through days like clockwork. If you stop by, she’ll invite you in for tea and you’ll feel comfortable and sane.

When we get busy about our days with billboards and TV commericals and the marketing of celebrity sameness, and stories about just what’s wrong, we can forget about what’s right. That a person like Susan Boyle can walk out on a stage, belt out a song with a triumphant lift of her arm during the high notes, and remind us just how great we can be. In today’s word, it’s also astounding that such a message can reach millions around the globe almost as soon as the magic begins. What better Global Ambassador of Goodwill is there?

Here’s a video I found with various shots of Susan Boyle in her world

And another one of her singing “Cry Me a River” that was published on a fundraising CD. Her performance wasn’t a fluke.