In his own words, Paul Potts

Here’s a post by Paul Potts, winner of Britain’s Got Talent, from the UnrealityTV forum. Posted in the run up to the finals.

[I] did Barrymore’s My Kind of Music about 8 years ago and won a share of £16,000 (friends told me to take the majority of the money as the guy who had gone on to the show with me would not have had a chance without my voice, but we wouldn’t have had as many question right if it had someone else, so I split the money 50/50). I splashed some of the cash (probably more than I should have done) and spent the rest on voice training, and outfits. I sang with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in the summer of 99 and would have had a further 2 concerts with them, but the concerts got cancelled due to problems with licensing. I had another concert with them, but the management of the RPO had changed and they preferred to use someone from an agency instead.

I spent 2 summers in Italy, training with an opera school, and sang for Pavarotti, and Katia Ricciarelli. Had the opportunity to spend a year there, but had run out of money.

I had a very good year in 2003, with 2 big roles, Radames in Verdi’s Aida in Bath and Des Griuex in Puccini’s Manon Lescaut in London. It was, however a very unlucky year for my health: I had a burst appendix at the end of 2002, and had walked around with it for a week before going to the doctor’s. The registrar told me that if it was appendicitis I should be dead! Following the operation, I had complications and they found a 10cm tumour in my adrenal area.

They wanted to operate as soon as possible, but I negotiated the operation date for just after the production dates for Aida. I was in hospital for 2 weeks, in intensive care for 2 days. I had an unsuccessful audition with Welsh National Opera the day after I was discharged, (I was just too tired: in the run through with the accompanist I was in good form, but combined with the nerves of an audition I didn’t perform as well in the actual audition). Within a week I was on stage in full production rehearsals for the Puccini opera, and freaked evryone out when my partly open surgical wound started bleeding, I just got off the stage and changed my dressing.

The actual production was very sucessful and I enjoyed it a great deal. I had had another date with the RPO, but that one fell through too. I was gutted as I thought that this was truly gonna be my year. In july, following my wedding and honeymoon, and after being back at my day job (at Tesco at the time) for all of a week, I got run of my bicycle, and severely fractured my left collarbone. This did more damage to my singing than the two operations put together. Combined with having only 1 adrenal gland (they removed 1 with the tumour) which secretes the hormone cortisol which helps your body deal with stress, I didn’t sleep at all for the first month as I was in so much pain, and then my body shut itself down. I lost many roles in this period, although I did do a bit of work for the BBC at this time: performing with your arm in a sling is quite tricky as it doesn’t help your posture!

Not only that living on your credit cards for 2 years kind of uses all your resources, and I haven’t been able to afford singing lessons since then, and cannot travel the distances that I had before.

Here’s hoping that my luck changes this time!

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