I remember the first time I saw Susan Boyle. I was 16, arguably too old to be staying in with my family watching Britain’s Got Talent, but back in 2009 that’s how everyone spent their Saturday nights. Forty-seven-year-old Boyle, with her unkempt greying curls, drab lace dress and thick Scottish accent, didn’t look or act like the pop stars I knew. As she thrust her hips at Simon Cowell and told the audience – who by this point were openly laughing at her – she wanted to be as big as Elaine Paige, she was quickly cast as one of the programme’s joke acts.
And then she sang. That one stunning rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” changed Boyle’s life for ever – her first album is one of the bestselling albums of the 21st century, selling 10 million copies worldwide. In 2011, she became the first woman to have three successive albums debut at No 1 in under two years. She might not have won the series (that honour went to Diversity), but she ended up performing for the late Queen anyway – at her Diamond Jubilee, and at the opening ceremony of the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
It would never happen today. Not because Boyle’s talent doesn’t still deserve such applause (I’ve just rewatched that audition and felt that same swell of emotion) – but because Britain’s Got Talent is culturally redundant.
Tonight, BGT is back for its 18th series. Cowell – creator and owner of the production company that makes the series – is back in his judging chair, along with Bruno Tonioli, Amanda Holden, and Alesha Dixon. Robots, strongmen, dancers, singers, impressionists and even a pole-dancing seagull will be hoping to impress with their “talent” and win £250,000. Oh, and the irresistible prize of performing at the Royal Variety Performance…
ITV would like us to think that this is a new and improved BGT. New to the series is YouTuber, musician, boxer, energy drinks mogul KSI, hired presumably in the hope he’ll bring just a fraction of his 25 million subscribers along with him. There are a few broadcasting changes, too: it is airing earlier in the year than usual, plugging the gap left by the death of Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway, and the live semi-finals are going weekly, rather than squeezed across one week. Will any of these changes matter? I doubt it.
Back in 2009 when Boyle auditioned, an average of 13.36 million of us watched Simon Cowell and his cronies Amanda Holden and Piers Morgan make-and-break dreams up and down the country. Now, less than half of that number – 5.64 million – tune in. Of course, since Netflix took over our TVs, these figures are slightly misleading: the number of people watching broadcast channels has fallen off a cliff across the board, and any show that pulls in over five million can still be considered a winner.
The real problem for Cowell is how much – or rather, how little – we value BGT as a star-maker. Why would one foster a “talent” and show it off to has-been Simon Cowell when you could become a bigger sensation by going on The Traitors and singing a nursery rhyme backwards? (See: this year’s contestant Alexander). Social media – particularly TikTok and YouTube – has proven fertile ground for talent scouting. In fact, TikTokers (like 10-year-old dancer Trey Braine, comedian Bobby Goldfin) have started to appear on the BGT stage in recent years – I can only presume they’ve been invited to show off their talents for the same reason KSI is sat at the judging desk.
But BGT was at its best when it gave outsiders a chance. Susan Boyle, Diversity and other winners like dancer George Sampson and singer Paul Potts tugged on our heartstrings because we felt that they were genuine people who wouldn’t be given such an opportunity if it weren’t for a programme like BGT.
In its glory days, we saw Cowell as a dream weaver, kindly helping the talented masses become stars. We forgave – or worse, ignored – the fact that the other half of BGT was little more than a freak show, ridiculing those who dared to put themselves out there despite having little to no talent. “Why does no one tell them they can’t dance?” we’d ask – the blame was on the acts and their encouraging families, not the producers for putting them on stage and certainly not us laughing along at home. The worst thing is that these joke acts made BGT worth watching. I’m ashamed to say it, but now that it’s moved away from taking the mick out its auditionees, it’s nothing but a clip show of tear-jerking hope-porn – unwatchable, in other words.
There is no greater currency than authenticity now, either – and, in that respect, BGT is utterly bankrupt. Behind-the-scenes moments are too obviously faked, the emotional beats plainly engineered, the crowd reactions transparently forced (those of us who have been in the audience for one of these shows know just how exhausting it is to pretend to laugh and obediently clap when told to for hours on end).
And in 2022, even former judge David Walliams proved himself to be spurious when he was recorded making sexually explicit comments about a contestant and calling another a “c**t”. He quickly decided to leave. Of course he did. Britain’s Got Talent is supposed to be about embracing the great unwashed – it couldn’t have a judge who clearly despised those trying to impress him.
But Britain’s Got Talent was dead long before that. We live in a different time, and Simon Cowell is no longer the king the British public held him up as. It’s a zombie programme, on its last legs and desperately grabbing at the thinning meat of what’s left of Britain’s broadcast viewing public. No amount of dancing TikTokers or YouTuber judges is going to bring it back from the brink. If only I had my own big red buzzer.
‘Britain’s Got Talent’ starts tonight at 7pm on ITV1
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