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In 2007, Paul Potts won the first series of Britain’s Got Talent. Now, he’s back for AGT: The Champions, which brings together the top acts across all countries.
With all that time in the spotlight, people have grown curious about Potts’ personal life. What do we know about his family and wife, who has been supporting him every step of the way? Get the details here.
1. He Met His Wife in an Internet Chat Room
In May 2003, Potts married his wife, Julie-Ann. The two met in an Internet chat room in 2001. They then met face to face at Swansea Railway Station, according to Wales Online.
The pair followed up with a bowling date.
Today, Paul and his wife still can’t believe the life they have led after Paul won Britain’s Got Talent. He tells the Daily Mail, “Julz and I still look at each other and say, ‘We can’t believe this has happened to us.’ I don’t think that feeling will ever leave us.”
Speaking of his life before meeting Julie-Ann, Potts tells the Telegraph, “Well, I’ve always been serious in everything I’ve done… Perhaps a little too serious. I’d get committed a little easily, so I got hurt quite easily. Plus, I never believed that anybody could love me.”
2. A Biopic About Potts’ Life Was Made in 2013
James Corden stars in the 2013 biographical film One Chance which is about Potts’ life and experience making it to Britain’s Got Talent. The movie was directed by David Frankel, and screened at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival.
During filming, Potts visited the film set, where he met the actors portraying himself.
As Wales Online points out, Potts was living in a cramped house and was the manager of the Carphone Warehouse Store in Bridgend when he appeared on Britain’s Got Talent. After his successful run on the reality TV show, he and his wife moved into an art-deco mansion overlooking Swansea Bay.
Speaking to Wales Online about the film, director David Frankel said of the movie, “It’s just the Rocky story. I think most people were not aware of the full extent of the adversity that Potts suffered, but it’s also a love story. It’s a story of this guy who meets a woman online, a guy with no confidence, still living at home with his parents and working in a Carphone Warehouse, and he meets this woman who just believes in him.”
3. He Hopes to Start a Family with His Wife
One day, Paul hopes to start a family with his wife. According to the Daily Mail, however, Julie-Ann suffers polycystic ovary syndrome, which is a common cause of infertility in women.
The singer tells the Daily Mail, “She’s having treatment, though we’re not at the IVF stage yet… She needs to lose some weight – we both do – before they’ll start her on medication that will help her ovulate. I never want to get to the stage where we’ve turned having a baby into a military exercise, because then it stops being about love. I just think things will come out right.”
4. He Had a Rough Childhood
One of my favourite performances of one of my favourite arias – E Lucevan le Stelle from a performance in Seoul 2 years ago…
According to the Daily Mail, Paul had a trying childhood. His father, Roland, “barely scraped a living working in a succession of manual jobs and his mother, Yvonne, attempted to contribute to the family income doing piece-work from home.”
The financial pressures reportedly led to a number of fights; some that Paul found himself in the middle of. “If I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, I’d get caught up in the fighting.”
5. He Was the Second of Four Children
Paul Potts performs on stage during the tv show ‘Willkommen bei Carmen Nebel’ at Tempodrom on April 7, 2016 in Berlin, Germany.
Paul grew up the second of four children.
He has been very open about the fact that he was bullied as a child, saying that it started when he was seven and didn’t stop until he was 18. Bullying is depicted in the biopic One Chance.
“… they’d just hit me harder,” Potts tells The Daily Mail. “It was like at home – if I answered back, things just got worse. The way I saw it, I didn’t deserve to be treated any other way than in a bad way. But, if you’re allowing people to do things to you that you don’t want them to do, your self esteem can only go down.”
In school, he was often called Pol Pot. He tells the Telegraph, “Eh, I was repeatedly bullied by it… Repeatedly,” he says. “It was one of the reasons I was bullied in school. Again, it’s something I cover in the book. I always shake my head when I see somebody tweet that as if it’s a brand new joke. It’s been going since the late Seventies.”