According to the Daily Star, Ms. Boyle was rushed from her home in Blackburn, West Lothian, Scotland on Sunday morning with agonizing stomach cramps.  She spent 2 & 1/2 hours in the hospital for testing, and when she emerged she was looking very drained.

Last night people connected to Ms. Boyle did release a statement that she was not suffering from Swine Flu as some people have suspected, but they also were not entirely clear as to what the problem was.  The entire comment consisted of, “Susan is absolutely fine. We have no further comment to make.”

This is the second time that Ms. Boyle has been hospitalized in five months, but the last time appeared to be for a nervous disorder.  Hopefully Ms. Boyle will be healthy soon, and we wish her a speedy recovery.

The Daily Record unearthed a home video shot of Susan Boyle auditioning for Michael Barrymore’s My Kind of People back in 1995.  The audtion was held at the Olympia Shopping Centre in East Kilbride, and was caught on camcorder by the 18-year-old daughter of one of the other contestants.  Michael Barrymore, a well-known comedian in the UK, mocked Ms. Boyle as she performed, and even attempted to look up her skirt as she sang.  To Ms. Boyle’s credit, she kept on going without missing a note of the song.

Tom Bergeron, the host of Dancing With the Stars in the United States, had an editorial in today’s the New York Times about how Susan Boyle, as he puts it, needs to “run away.”  The reason for this is that he fears the inevitable backlash, which I have to agree with him has already started, where the people who were enthralled with her will begin to turn on her.

The kind of love she’s getting isn’t a tenth as genuine as her pussycat’s purr (and even Pebbles is mostly angling to get fed). We saw the eye-rolling in the audience moments before she performed. We heard the derisive wolf whistle. And then she sang, and the humbled audience sprang to their feet in sudden adoration.

[...]

Ms. Boyle’s experience seems to suggest that people are willing to overcome their prejudices and see the world anew. But those same people can turn back into snarky snobs just as easily. Some already have. Post goose-bumped pundits are speculating about a deliberate charade to increase ratings.

I have to agree with Mr. Bergeron, and I hope she is surrounded by good, loving, people who have known her from long before this fame came into her life.  I’m not sure running away from it is the best solution, but just keeping her head on straight should help with a lot of the issues.

Today on Today, Hoda Kotb and Mario Lopez discussed just released photos of Susan Boyle that shows she has dyed her hair a deep brown.  Add this to the eyebrow makeover from the other day, and you wonder how much further she will take the change to her looks.  So far they aren’t too radical, and she does look better, but hopefully she won’t do anything too crazy in the near future.

For some reason the video is not cooperating, but if you go to the site linked, click on “Videos” and then “Entertainment” you will see it.

While the subject of cleaning up Susan Boyle’s looks has come up in many interviews, pretty much every one, even Britain’s Got Talent Judge Amanda Holden, thought it was a bad idea at this time.  Well, either someone gave her the greenlight, or maybe she just decided to do it herself, but as you can clearly see in the picture to the right, Ms. Boyle is slowly transforming.  The hair is looking a bit more kept, the eyebrows have clearly been plucked and the clothes are looking a bit snappier.

I’m not sure how people should feel about this.  Part of the charm of Ms. Boyle was that she was such an everyday person, and while these changes aren’t radical, you have to wonder where they will end.  If this is the end of it, than fine, we can probably live with it, but any further than this and it’s going to feel like too much I think.

I do definitely prefer the UK interviews of Ms. Boyle to the American ones, I think mainly becuase they can actually do them in person as opposed to being via satellite.  This morning it was GMTV’s turn, and we learned that the local council has built a new fence in front of her home to help keep the press away.  We also heard her singing a bit of “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina”, which was nice, but the big moment came when she was asked about her comment on Britain’s Got Talent about having never been kissed.  She now says it was a joke, but yu can judge for yourself.

Telegraph.co.uk has come into possession of a recording that Susan Boyle made in 1999 of the 1973 hit song “Killing Me Softly” by Roberta Flack.  It seems Ms. Boyle made the recording at her own expense to attempt to get on various television and radio talent shows, all of which she was not accepted to.  At the time she made the recording she told her friends that she had spent all of her savings on recording thsi song and an earlier demo version of what would become her “Cry Me A River” release on a charity CD.

Personally I don’t think this song fits her as well as the others, but it is still enjoyable.

Unlike most stories about Susan Boyle, this one doesn’t feature her being interviewed, and there is no one from Britain’s Got Talent on it… kind of odd, honestly. It does make mention of Demi Moore’s message on Twitter which was how I actually first learned of Susan Boyle back on April 12th, though.  Considering the number of followers she and her husband, Ashton Kutcher, have on that site, I would hazard to guess that is how a lot of people first came to learn of Ms. Boyle and her amazing singing voice.

All in all, still an interesting video to watch, especially when they show the video to the East End cast of Les Miserables.