Britains Got Talent Winner - Paul Potts

Paul Potts (born 1971 in Bristol, England), from Port Talbot in South Wales, was the winner of the first series of ITV's Britain's Got Talent, singing operatic aria and wowing the judges in all of his performances. Potts had previously worked in unpaid opera productions from 1999 to 2003, however, illness in 2003 brought an end to his amateur opera career.^[1] At the time of his victory he had been working in The Carphone Warehouse, but following his win has been signed by Simon Cowell to record an album.

On June 9, 2007, his audition of Simon Cowell's new search-for-a-star show Britain's Got Talent was televised on ITV in UK. The actual audition was held at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff on March 17, 2007^[2]. Paul sang a condensed version of Giacomo Puccini's "Nessun dorma", which amazed the judges and received a standing ovation from the 2,000-strong audience. Paul's rendition of this has currently been viewed on video upload site YouTube tens of millions of times and exists among Youtube's all-time most viewed videos.

Audition Performance

Britains Got Talent Paul Potts
Uploaded by PeteRock

In the semi-final on June 14, Potts performed main verses of "Con te partirò" with praise from the audience and judges. He progressed to the final after receiving the highest public vote in that show.^[3] He performed a full-length "Nessun dorma" for his final on June 17th as well as an encore after he won the competition. Potts easily defeated co-favourite with the bookmakers, Connie Talbot and received the highest public vote out of 2 million votes cast to win Britain's Got Talent.

In the United States, he was profiled on a National Public Radio programme called "Day to Day" on Friday June 15th. NPR is a non-commercial network that reaches several million people every day in the U.S. On Monday, June 18th, a commercial US Television network, NBC, highlighted Mr Potts's victory on its broadcast network's "NBC Nightly News" and on its Cable news outlet MSNBC. Then on Thursday, June 21st, he appeared live on NBC's widely-viewed program "Today". As a consequence, a sizable number of Americans have had a chance to learn his story and hear him sing.

Final Night Performance

During the programme there was some controversy^[4]as to the 'undiscovered' nature of Potts' talent, who was portrayed on the show as simply a mobile phone salesman, whereas he had in fact appeared in four amateur opera productions and in a concert for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra^[5] and had plans for a summer tour with the Orchestra. ^[5] Potts responded to his critics saying that he had not claimed to be completely untutored, but had never performed any concert for pay, and was therefore amateur, and that the lessons he had received in Italy he had paid for from his own savings.^[1]