Dispatch from Britain: Susan Boyle’s hospitalization spurs reflection, media speculation

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This morning, London awoke to a shockingly sunny day along with the sadly unsurprising news that Susan Boyle, the world-famous YouTube sensation who on Saturday night placed second on the hit show ‘Britain’s Got Talent,’ had been hospitalized at London’s Priory Clinic for exhaustion.

This news posits Boyle in disturbingly close ranks with the fragile starlets whose pop culture supremacy Boyle’s stunning initial performance on the talent show seemed to defy. The first news stories of the day neglected to remark on this, though by noon here the think pieces began rolling in.

The Guardian – which on Sunday published a post-show lament about how Twitter was to blame for Boyle’s problems and called for Britons to “shout a little less, and get out a little more” (Kinda harsh. It rains a lot here. Also, pub culture is nice.) – this morning published a roundup of the night’s events.

Early this morning, the Scotsman reported that Boyle’s neighbors in the town of Blackburn were devastated by the news. Later in the day, the family weighed in.

Most news stories on Boyle’s hospitalization reported how, on a morning chat show, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he hoped Boyle was OK because “she’s a really, really nice person.” Brown apparently put concerned calls in to judges Simon Cowell and Piers Morgan, the former Daily Mirror journalist who has become somewhat of a spokesman for Boyle. Morgan, in turn, told GMTV that he spoke with the contestant for half an hour Sunday. He also defended Simon Cowell, insisting that Cowell’s main stake in Boyle was caring rather than strictly mercenary. (On the show, the two judges appear to hate each other.)

Meanwhile, the third ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ judge, Amanda Holden, took to the American airwaves to share her Boyle scoop. She had announced previously that she’d be guest hosting CBS’ ‘The Early Show’ this Monday morning. She made the announcement on Twitter, of course.

-- Alison Pollet, reporting from Cambridge, England

(File photo of Susan Boyle courtesy HO/AFP/Getty Images)