Britain's Got Talent / The Betfair Contrarian / 06 May 2009 / Leave a comment

The Betfair Contrarian is convinced that Susan Boyle will be performing at this year's Royal Variety Show...

This is an odd one for the Contrarian, as frumpy songbird Susan Boyle has been so hot that not even Gordon Brown could out-Youtube her, and even though the Britain's Got Talent semi-finals haven't started yet, La Boyle is already the proud owner of a bigger Wikipedia page than both of the two previous winners.

However, despite the honey-throated 48-year-old already establishing herself as the biggest star the TV talent show has ever produced, Betfair punters have started to take against, and her price is drifting (she can still be backed at [2.28] to win). So here's why the Contrarian says fie to the naysayers:

There are similarities with Paul Potts' audition...

Both singers were introduced with similar stories about being bullied at school and going on to have mundane lives, suffering from loneliness and finding success elusive. Potts and Boyle both looked unassuming as they stepped onto the stage at the start of their auditions to be sneered at by the judges while the audience sniggered, only to leave them dumbfounded once they started singing.

...which bodes very well

From the moment Potts wowed everybody at his audition and was smothered in praise by the judges, the show appeared very much a foregone conclusion. The stage has been set for Boyle to replicate that success this year. Both singer's first performances were impressive, but were made far more memorable by the way the producers set them up as losers, making their success appear even more remarkable and against the odds.

Singers are hugely popular on Britains Got Talent

Logic would dictate that as ITV already has its own singing talent show, dancers, comedians, daredevils and other genres of entertainment would dominate, but that hasn't been the case, with vocalists enjoying the most success in the show. Half of the acts to have finished in the top three in the two series to date have been singers, despite just as many dancers reaching the final round.

Her popularity would have to wane spectacularly

Celebrities and their reality equivalents often reach a point where they become so popular that a tide of resentment rises against them. There is a theory that viewers will vote for an alternative to try to stop Boyle from winning because she has become bigger than the show and upsets are commonplace on reality TV: Javine Hylton missing out on a place in Girls Aloud, Will Young beating Gareth Gates in the first series of Pop Idol, Leon Jackson overcoming Rhydian Roberts on the X Factor, Brian beating the weird northern twins in Big Brother...it's a long list. However, given the amount of the publicity she has gained it would be take an immense shift in public opinion for her to miss out such as a News of the World exclusive revealing a grisly secret about her past and no such dirt has been dug up in almost a month since her audition was aired.

Proof of her popularity

Evidence of the interest in Boyle is provided by the fact that a video of her audition is already the 28th most watched in YouTube's history with over 52 million views, while over 250,000 comments have been posted on the clip, alongside 749 video responses. In addition, she has been in the thoughts of numerous celebrities recently, with Demi Moore claiming to have been moved to tears by her rendition of I Dreamed a Dream and Russell Brand vowing not to take her virginity.

Boyle has been labelled unbeatable

While Betfair continue to offer the very generous price of [2.28], other pundits have confidently predicted that there is no way she will lose. One betting expert claimed: "This is going ballistic, we have never had a phenomenon like it in 10 years of reality TV betting, and the odds suggest that she is already unbeatable despite the fact that we have seen only a small number of the competitors."