Paul Potts:"I keep waiting for someone to pinch me and say 'Wake up, Paul, it's time for work - you're late again'. I feel like I'm on a rollercoaster - a white knuckle ride into the unknown. And I don't want to get off!"
"Britain's Got Talent winner Paul Potts has spent most of his life feeling 'insignificant'. Bullied at school for being 'different', he realised growing up that he had one true friend and that was his voice. Singing was his escape. He was able to lose himself in his own little world - the vicious words of his tormentors replaced by hauntingly beautiful lyrics and melodies that lifted his heart and spirit. It was a love, a passion, a lifeline that would follow Paul into adulthood and help him through many more periods of adversity.(...)
Born just outside Bristol on October 13, 1970, to bus driver Roland and his wife Yvonne, a supermarket cashier, Paul - who's one of four children
- was singing almost from the moment he could talk.(...)
By the time he reached 11, he was part of one of the best church choirs in Bristol. But it was when he hit 16 that his love of opera took hold. "I bought a cheap recording of Carreras," he recalls. "It was the first time I had heard Che Gelida Manina (Your Tiny Hand Is Frozen) and I was so moved by it. To this day La Boheme remains my favourite opera."
Although Paul has performed at amateur level, most notably with Bath Opera, his chronic lack of self esteem and fear of rejection always prevented him from trying to make it professionally. " As I saw it, if I never asked - never put myself out there - then I'd never get told "No",'says Paul. "It was safer that way."
So instead, he carried on with his day jobs - which have included stacking shelves in a supermarket and, most recently and famously, selling mobile phones, where he was told by one of his superiors that he was a 'natural salesman'. "But I knew I wasn't," says Paul.(...)
In 2000, Paul used savings and a bit of money he'd won on a quiz show to attend a three-month summer school in Italy, where he learned the language.(...)In 2003, he suffered a burst appendix. While undergoing treatment for this, doctors discovered a benign tumour on his adrenal gland. It was successfully removed but while he was recovering, he was knocked off his bike and broke his collarbone. "Of all the health problems I'd been through, breaking my collar bone was the most painful and it took months to recover," says Paul. " I got very, very low and for once, singing was the last thing on my mind."
And he might have given up forever, had it not been for Britain's Got Talent - the talent show for today's generation.(...)Paul strolled awkwardly - almost apologetically - onto the Cardiff stage for his first Britain’s Got Talent audition a week before that final, in his now infamous £35 Tesco suit, and announced to Simon and fellow judges that he was going to sing opera. (..)
"A humble bloke who's not even aware of his amazing gift - Paul
Potts is a true star" wrote one.
"It has changed my whole life. I used to feel so small and insignificant.
But now I know I am someone - I am Paul Potts and this is what I do,"
smiles Paul.
But don't worry - there's no danger of him going all starry and getting above himself! "I am not going to change - although I might invest in some nicer suits! But whatever happens, I'm keeping that Tesco one. It's a reminder of where I was and where I attempt to remain - except in better clothes!"
Paul also hopes to get his teeth done. "I don't think I'd suit one of those dazzling Hollywood smiles, but I'd like to get the cap sorted as I'm very conscious about it when I sing." Other plans for the £100,000 prize money include taking proud wife Julie-Ann, 27, who he wed four years ago, on safari - and, fingers crossed, starting a family.
"It's something we couldn't afford to think about before," explains Paul, who lives with Julie-Ann in a modest two bedroomed house in Port Talbot, south Wales. "Now we can and that would complete things. (...)Finally, I am going to be doing what I've always felt I was put here to do - something I love and that gives me so much joy".
from http://www.paulpottsuk.com/article/biography
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