Susan Boyle’s dark secret...my father beat me
SINGER Susan Boyle has revealed how her father used to hit her – as she opens her heart for the first time about the secrets of her traumatic childhood.
In an exclusive interview in today’s Event magazine, the Britain’s Got Talent star says: ‘My father, though a very good man, had a temper. He showed it to me and he hurt me. He didn’t mean to, but I held on to this for years and, when he was dying, I had to let it go. You have to accept it, that’s maturity.’
Her father was Patrick Boyle, a miner who emigrated to Scotland from Ireland, served as a sergeant major in the Royal Engineers in the Second World War and died in 1997 aged 81, ten years after Susan’s mum Bridget.
Ms Boyle, 55, added: ‘It’s not easy, but you have to let it go and replace it with a new self. That’s what I’ve been focusing on over the past six months. It’s difficult. I’ve been coming to terms with it.’
Her painful recollections are confirmed by a close family friend, who said: ‘Yes, her dad was heavy-handed. It was due to his time in the war.’
Despite an estimated £25million fortune, the singer – who shot to fame in 2009 with her spinetingling rendition of I Dreamed A Dream on the TV talent show – still lives in the modest family home where she was brought up in Blackburn, West Lothian.
She has shied away from the limelight for the past two years, but is ready to take centre stage again with a new album of love songs, chosen by her mentor Simon Cowell, called A Wonderful World.
The songs may be romantic but the singer is still single, though she keeps in touch with a doctor she met in Florida. She said: ‘Potentially it’s not finished. I’d like to see him more. But I’m very busy, and it’s been a long time. But I would like someone. I’m very sensitive… [but] sometimes I can be hard to get.’