A cheat — or, finally, a BGT hopeful with real talent?
Her voice electrified viewers. Then came the online backlash. Now 12-year-old Beau’s parents hit back
As a baby, beau Dermott’s howls could raise the rafters. ‘she had the most enormous scream,’ her mother Karen remembers. ‘Maybe that’s where it came from’. ‘It’ being beau’s voice, which 12 years on remains huge — although it has also turned into something altogether different, as anyone who watched last saturday’s episode of britain’s Got Talent can testify.
No one expected too much from the shylooking schoolgirl when she stepped on stage, blinking nervously under the hot auditorium lights.
Then she opened her mouth — and out came a pitch-perfect rendition of a song from the hit musical Wicked.
all dramatic eyes and heartfelt gestures, the performance felt so nuanced, so grown up, that it was as though the head of Elaine Paige had been transplanted onto beau’s body.
The performance was enough to send the 12-year-old straight to the semi-finals, bypassing any other heat. but it also propelled her straight into a series of unflattering headlines.
Far from being a shy ingénue, it was claimed, beau was a product of pushy showbiz parenting, hot-housed with extensive vocal training and trailing a CV packed with talent show performances.
That apparent flutter of nerves? all an act for the camera. ‘Cheat’ one newspaper headline proclaimed.
so I’m not sure what to expect when I arrive at the Dermotts’ handsome detached home in leafy Widnes, Cheshire. Will beau be showcasing her impressive range under the gimlet eye of a private singing tutor? Will her parents be poring over a ten-year plan for their daughter?
Nothing of the sort. When I step through the front door beau, still in school uniform, is cuddling the family dog, bailey, an eightyear-old bichon-Frise, while Karen is making dinner.
In other words, they’re a normal family — and ready to fight back over what they see as a series of snide, unfair accusations. all they have done is what any parent would do with their daughter’s talent — that is, nurture it.
‘Cheat is a big word and it’s not nice,’ Ian says. ‘all our daughter has done is had singing lessons locally and entered a few talent contests along with scores of other girls her age.
‘We know the cliché of the stageschool brat and that’s not our daughter. you only need to spend five minutes in her company to know that she’s just a lovely, normal girl.’
In the flesh, beau seems even shyer than she was on stage. ‘she just comes alive when she performs,’ says Ian.
Unlike the average teen, beau’s heroines are the stars of musical theatre. she doesn’t even like pop music really. ‘I normally just listen to musicals,’ she confesses.
and there is not even much in the way of musicality in the Dermott family.
While Ian’s late mother used to sing in a choir, Ian is a bricklayer by trade and Karen used to be a receptionist, although today they run their own business providing brickwork to building companies.
ThE couple, who also have a son, ben, a 21- year-old business student, discovered their daughter’s vocal talent by accident. ‘When she was very small, beau liked to watch The sound Of Music over and over,’ recalls Karen.
‘she’d sit for ages in front of it,’ Ian adds. ‘Then, one day when she was about three, I could hear her in her room singing The hills are alive. Full pelt she was.
‘I called Karen over and we both stood at the door. she didn’t know we were listening because she was so absorbed.
‘Obviously, we were quite taken aback, although we didn’t make too much of it at the time.’
One of beau’s primary school teachers subsequently noticed her voice, too. ‘she had been a singer in the past herself, and so she would get her to sing little songs in assembly,’ Ian recalls.
For a while, that was the extent of beau’s public performances. Then, five years ago, the Dermotts took seven-year-old beau to see The sound of Music at Liverpool’s Empire Theatre.
‘We got front-row seats and beau was literally on the edge of hers,’ Karen recalls. ‘she was mesmerised. We realised this was something she really wanted to do.’
Galvanised, the couple booked some singing lessons for their daughter with Warrington-based school stage-Pro — a name which Ian insists is rather misleading.
‘It’s not some posh academy; it’s a local stage school that offers dance and singing lessons. It’s a place where beau could go on a saturday morning,’ he says.
‘sometimes she’d go once a month, sometimes once every three months — it was when she was in the mood. Other saturdays she’d go horse riding.’
It was enough, though, for her talent to be nurtured: within three or four lessons, her first teacher had handed beau a microphone and asked her to learn a song by heart to perform to a backing track to see how she would get on.
she chose With a smile and a song from snow White, and Ian still has the footage — his daughter all fringe and hesitancy — on his phone. ‘I had tears in my eyes when I heard it,’ says Karen.
It was a while, though, before their daughter sang in public — and only then, says Ian, at a local show put on by stage-Pro.
‘she was around nine — we didn’t think she was ready before then — and it was in front of an audience of about 200 people, mainly other parents.’
In its wake beau has also done other talent contests, but it is all supremely local, Ian emphasises.
she does, however, attend a local performing arts school, The hammond school in Chester, which costs £4,275 a term.
‘she went to a normal primary school and was all set to go to a local secondary, but we heard about this school and it was a no-brainer to give it a try,’ says her father.
‘she wanted to audition, and she got in. It was all driven by what she wanted to do. she just loves performing, although the school is academic, too.’
It was beau’s idea to audition for britain’s Got Talent — twice. The contest has come under fire in the past for putting children in the spotlight: unable to cope with the pressure or criticism from the judges there have been plenty of tears on stage. Were Karen and Ian worried? ‘It helped that beau had had some practice performing at smaller venues so it wasn’t completely strange to her,’ says Ian.
‘she applied last year and sang I Dreamed a Dream, but didn’t get through. I think they thought she wasn’t ready and they were probably right. It was beau’s idea to go again.’
This time she chose to perform Defying Gravity, sung by Wicked’s lead character Elphaba, from her favourite musical.
Was she nervous? ‘as I got closer to the stage the butterflies started,’ says beau. ‘but the moment I start to sing they were gone. I wasn’t me any more — I was Elphaba.’
Then came the carping — if nothing else a lesson in the fickle nature of overnight fame.
‘I shed a few tears,’ Karen says. ‘It’s not nice when your daughter is being attacked especially when it isn’t fair.’
There could be plenty more where that came from — not to mention the other pitfalls that await those who get very famous very young.
‘all we can do is monitor the situation,’ says Ian. ‘The problem is that she’s got this voice and she’s 12. you want to protect her childhood, but at the same time we don’t want to hold her back. It’s a difficult balance.’
It’s one that is only going to get harder, especially if beau makes it to the bGT final.
her parents insist they are proud of her whatever happens.
‘I get as much pleasure watching my daughter singing for the family as I do watching her on the britain’s Got Talent stage,’ says Ian. ‘The important thing is that she’s doing what she loves.’