Paul Potts

When the U.K. edition of Britain's Got Talent finally premiered after repeated postponements, Paul Potts matched exactly the profile its creators sought: an everyday worker holding an unremarkable position yet blessed with exceptional vocal gifts. After spending half a decade shaping television singing formats, Simon Cowell launched a nationwide competition judged by public vote that welcomed singers alongside dancers, magicians, ventriloquists, and more unconventional novelty performers. The venture suffered an early reversal when original host Paul O'Grady defected to Channel Four, leading ITV to enlist Ant & Dec and green-light the series for June 2007. Among the array of auditioning vocalists stood Doctor Gore, the horror magician known for simulated dissections, the drag troupe Kit Kat Dolls, and several young contestants, notably six-year-old Connie Talbot. Potts's declaration that he would perform Nessun Dorma instantly positioned him as joint favorite for the £100,000 prize and a booking at the Royal Variety Show.

Born in Bristol on 13 October 1970 as one of four children to a bus-driver father and a supermarket-employee mother, Potts endured an ordinary childhood during which he later recalled being bullied. After leaving school he stacked shelves at a supermarket before taking employment at the Bridgend branch of mobile-phone retailer Carphone Warehouse at the time he auditioned. In 1999 he gained his first television exposure on Michael Barrymore's My Kind of Music, using the prize money to attend a summer vocal course in Italy. He appeared with the amateur Bath Opera, taking the roles of Don Basilio in The Marriage of Figaro, Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni, and the Herald in Turandot, and he also toured Italy while performing with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Those prior activities prompted questions on the program about its emphasis on undiscovered talent, yet Potts pointed out that he had never been paid for any appearance and had covered all training costs himself. Chronic self-doubt and a 2003 collarbone injury nearly ended his singing ambitions. Victory on the show transformed his outlook, and less than a month after the finale—where he again sang Nessun Dorma—his debut album One Chance appeared, moving more than 125,000 copies in its first week.

Passione, Potts's second album, arrived in 2009 after nearly a year of sessions in Prague and Stockholm; the collection mixed selections from musicals, operas, and film scores to suit his expanding fan base. Dropped by Simon Cowell's Syco label in 2010, he moved to Sony for Cinema Paradiso, an album devoted to well-known movie themes that achieved success in Canada, Germany, and Taiwan yet received no U.K. release. In 2013 he issued his autobiography, also titled One Chance, which was adapted the following year into a comedy-drama film starring James Corden. The picture opened at number six on the U.K. box-office chart and ultimately grossed nearly $11 million worldwide. Corden lip-synced to Potts's voice, and the soundtrack incorporated the original Britain's Got Talent audition. Also in 2014 came the compilation Greatest Hits and the independently released fourth album Home, on which Potts explored pop and rock through operatic versions of material by Sting, Foo Fighters, the Eagles, and Guns N' Roses' "November Rain." On Stage, issued in 2017, featured favored show tunes such as "Impossible Dream" and "Send in the Clowns" together with a re-recorded Nessun Dorma.