It's going to take more than YouTube success for Scottish singing sensation Susan Boyle to take the top prize on the reality show "Britain's Got Talent," says judge Simon Cowell.
Tens of millions have watched her inspiring performance of "I Dreamed a Dream" on the video upload site, but the tough-talking Cowell says victory is not yet in the bag for the 47-year-old Boyle.
"She has four weeks to prepare for the biggest night of her life, which is, she's got to sing better than she sang before," Cowell said in an interview with Access Hollywood.
And what's more, Cowell says the intense focus on Boyle's personal life - and excessive portrayals of her as a frumpy spinster living alone with her cat - could actually hurt her chances in the show's finals.
"It could all go horribly wrong now because there's so many other distractions," he said. It wouldn't be the first time Boyle met with rejection before a TV audience.
Boyle auditioned for the British show "My Kind of People" in 1995, reports the Daily Mail - but was booted from the show and ridiculed by the show's host Michael Barrymore for her disheveled appearance after she sang "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from the musical "Jesus Christ Superstar."
The footage was never aired on television, but the Mail obtained it from the daughter of another contestant who filmed the auditions with a personal camcorder. Fast forward nearly 15 years - and Boyle is having better luck.
Cowell said if she does win "Britain's Got Talent," she may also appear on its American counterpart. "I think I would say to anybody who won the British show that we guarantee them now a spot on the American show," he said.
"And I think that's a great incentive for the British winner now. So if it is Susan, yes." Despite his caution, Cowell was hopeful that Boyle's sudden fame would help garner big ratings for the American version of the reality competition.
"I am seriously thinking now that we should hold maybe two more open auditions off the back of Susan Boyle since the awareness is that much higher," he told Access Hollywood. And fellow judge Piers Morgan says the U.S. could very well have its own "Susan Boyle" once "America's Got Talent" hits the airwaves.
"There's one guy who hunts chickens. And in fact, if all he did was come on stage and say, ‘My talent is I catch 6,000 chickens a night,' he probably would have won the show. But his talent is he then sings like Garth Brooks," Morgan said.
"It is one of those moments when half the audience are in tears."
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