{"id":1472,"date":"2007-06-24T18:01:42","date_gmt":"2007-06-24T22:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/2007\/06\/24\/triumph-of-the-average-looking-paul-potts\/"},"modified":"2007-06-24T18:01:42","modified_gmt":"2007-06-24T22:01:42","slug":"triumph-of-the-average-looking-paul-potts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2007\/06\/24\/triumph-of-the-average-looking-paul-potts\/","title":{"rendered":"Triumph of the average-looking: Paul Potts"},"content":{"rendered":"

I apologize to all of those who may have already seen and heard about him before, but I only just got a chance to check out Paul Potts<\/a>, the cellphone salesman and former supermarket shelf-stocker from Wales who won the Britain’s Got Talent<\/em> show with a mind-boggling rendition<\/a> of the Puccinia aria Nessun Dorma<\/em>. Someone mentioned it at work last week, but I didn’t get a chance to see the video clips until now, and they are incredible. <\/p>\n

snipshot_e4c8p8gn2lt.jpgStart with the semi-final<\/a> performance, and then check out the winning performance<\/a> (singing starts about 4 minutes in), and if you want to see more there’s a clip of Paul on NBC’s Today Show<\/a>. There’s no question that a big part of what caught the public imagination about Paul is his underwhelming appearance<\/a> — somewhat pudgy, with bad teeth — and his shy, unassuming personality, coupled with a tremendous operatic tenor voice. <\/p>\n

There was some controversy when British newspapers reported that he took opera lessons<\/a> and even performed for Pavarotti, and had performed with a local opera company. But Potts said he paid for those lessons out of his own pocket and that the opera company was volunteer. After being diagnosed<\/a> with a benign tumour and fracturing his collarbone falling off his bike, he was deeply in debt and took a job at Carphone Warehouse. <\/p>\n

Now he is $200,000 richer and will be performing for the Queen and the Royal Family at the annual Royal Variety show.<\/p>\n

[youtube https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=1k08yxu57NA&w=425&h=350]<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I apologize to all of those who may have already seen and heard about him before, but I only just got a chance to check out Paul Potts, the cellphone salesman and former supermarket shelf-stocker from Wales who won the Britain’s Got Talent show with a mind-boggling rendition of the Puccinia aria Nessun Dorma. Someone … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Triumph of the average-looking: Paul Potts”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}