FOR Susan Boyle, the dumpy woman with the amazing voice, life, it seems, had got in the way of her living.

Stuck in her Scottish town of Blackburn, she was the lonely, un-kissed spinster left by her siblings to care for their mother until the latter died.

Only her cat kept her company.

To be frank, one look at the 47-year-old unemployed church volunteer’s wiry hair and double chin, and, really, you wouldn’t be much surprised.

Then Boyle opened her mouth to sing on Britain’s Got Talent, got captured on YouTube, and, well, everything caught fire.

Everybody now wants a piece of her, from Oprah Winfrey to Larry King to Piers Morgan, one of the show’s judges and who offers to kiss her on her very first date.

She’s a sensation, a heroine, an ugly duckling-turned-swan.

She has star fans such as Twitter king Ashton Kutcher and wife Demi Moore, who reportedly cried watching her.

Still, I detect a lesson much more sobering.

This woman, a picture of dowdy ordinariness, has been rescued by her voice.

It is a gift so incredible, the sort bestowed upon a creature so unlikely it makes you wonder whether the gods are comedians.

But the rest of us though – many who look like her, live like her, and, in fact, are her – are not in the game. Most of us can’t sing to save our lives.

It’s disheartening to say this, but life is cruel generally for many people.

Every bit of news  about Boyle has basically trumpeted her phenomenon as proof that under the drab cover, the book could turn out to be a surprisingly fine read.

That is true only to an extent.

I have seen many an awful cover, picked up the book and found that, inside, the story predictably sucked.

There was no angelic voice soaring above the pages to lead me to hope and paradise.

If Boyle had lived up to expectations and warbled out what many in the initially-grimacing audience thought to be a deservedly ruinous sound, she would have returned to her humdrum life and receded into obscurity like so many others.

But fate was kind.

Fate let one escape to a place in the sun, and we all rejoice.

Man, on the other hand, is far more insidious.

There is a clamour now, expectedly, for her to do a makeover to be worthy of her voice.
She apparently is resisting it.

For sure, she should.

To remain an inspiration to the rest of us who believe in the meaning and beauty of what lies beneath, what shows outside must always stay the same.

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