Susan Boyle has opened up about receiving her Asperger’s Syndrome diagnosis and how it affected her during her rise to fame.
Watch Susan Boyle open up about her health on A Current Affair:
The notoriously private Britain’s Got Talent winner – she won the show in 2009 following her spine-tingling performance of I Dreamed A Dream – gave a rare interview to Tracey Grimshaw for A Current Affair and opened up about how much her mental health problems plagued her early career.
“I hadn’t had any kind of formal training on how to deal with the media and stuff like that … there was a lot of surprises in the early days,” the 58-year-old confessed to Grimshaw.
At the time of winning the show, Susan often found herself at the centre of harsh media scrutiny with reports of the Scottish singer’s alleged diva behaviour and bizarre meltdowns.
“I didn’t really know what was going to happen. But I’m a bit more relaxed now, I take it all in my stride.”
The singer revealed things improved in 2012 when she was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, which is a form of autism.
“That was just a relief for me, though, because for years I thought I had something a bit more serious, you know? So that took it off my shoulders a bit,” she said, admitting that at one point she thought she had serious brain damage.
“[With] Asperger’s you just have to make people aware that sometimes you have to go at a certain pace, don’t be too bombarded with things. At the very beginning I was too bombarded,” she explained.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Everybody has something. I mean, a flaw, if you like. But you shouldn’t be ashamed of it. It’s something that you bring out in the open in the hope that you help other people. I like to feel I’m the voice for people who have been the underdog, and I wanted to try and prove myself.”
“If people give you a bit more time — like you did, thank you — I can eventually get my words out and I’m okay,” said Boyle said to Grimshaw.
A Current Affair also spoke to Susan’s manager, Nicola Philips, addressing claims that the singer was being exploited and shouldn’t be performing.
“See I completely disagree,” she told Grimshaw. “She’s always said in terms of nerves that anxiety, the nerves of performing is what positions her into the place to get on stage, it focuses her. She loves it and she has an amazing life.”
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