Scoop: Cowell to help Susan Boyle find her voice

The good news: “Britain’s Got Talent” phenom Susan Boyle is said to be recovering well after her post-finale anxiety attack.

The bad news: Once she’s back on her feet, agenda item 1-A is to launch Boyle’s music career, thrusting her back into the very spotlight that burned her in the first place.

“There are people close to Susan who are devastated by this news,” says a source close to “BGT.” “She was so far out of her comfort zone and she could barely keep it together — that’s a fact the whole world is aware of. This has disaster written all over it.”

The tentative plan for Boyle involves having "Talent" and "American Idol" judge Simon Cowell ensure that she records albums with potential to sell well in the United States, with the hopes that buyers will see her tale as one of redemption.

“She doesn’t want to say no to recording,” says the source. “But everything else that comes with it? Concerts, television appearances? This is not what’s best for her. There has to be a way where she can sing and be financially secure, and not have to sacrifice her well-being.”

It’s easy to think that Cowell and his agent, Max Clifford, who will also be part of the Boyle plan, aren't helping Boyle. The reality: their hearts are in the right place.

Look at it this way: Susan Boyle is to “BGT” what the kids of “Slumdog Millionaire” are to director Danny Boyle. In both cases, a machine bigger than any one person got these unknowns into the mess that comes with worldwide fame. Wouldn’t it seem wrong for Cowell (or Danny Boyle) to stand by as the dreams of the performers they discovered were beaten to a pulp and left on the side of the road to die?

Let's hope that Susan Boyle takes her time in recovering. That would allow some time to lapse between “BGT” and her big debut, and time might be the only way to discover the elusive middle ground between fame and ruin.

No star treatment for Madonna
Madonna was among the boldface names at the Manhattan Polo Classic May 30, but she didn’t get the boldface treatment you might expect. The singer and her sons, David and Rocco, were left without anywhere to sit at the games.

It took pharmaceutical billionaire Stewart Rahr to give up his seats for the family.

“He happily gave up his viewing couch for her and her family,” said a source close to Rahr. “There were no other seats in sight.”

In other Madonna news, Us Weekly reports she is taking cooking lessons from Jessica Seinfeld so that she can prepare meals for her rumored beau, Jesus Luz. “(Seinfeld has) taught her some Brazilian dishes,” an insider told Us Weekly.

Meanwhile, Madge’s ex, Guy Ritchie, seems content dining solo. The single director “is making more time for himself and loving life,” reports the magazine, which goes on to say that he’s still not healed from his divorce. “Guy remains shell-shocked by the whole experience with Madonna. He’s like a dog that got released from being in the pound for seven years.”

Kate Winslet and Brad Pitt, TMI
There’s a lot to be said for Hollywood mystique. Celebrities are most successful onscreen when there’s some mystery about their personal life, which is why, when they start to overshare, a scent of desperation wafts through the room.

Today’s examples: Brad Pitt and Kate Winslet.

Winslet tells Allure in the June issue that when filming “The Reader,” she had to grow in the hair “down there,” so to speak. She tells Allure, “because of years of waxing, as all of us girls know, it doesn’t come back quite the way it used to. They even made me a merkin (wig) because they were so concerned that I might not be able to grow enough.”

As for Pitt, his “Inglorious Basterds” co-star Eli Roth told People that Pitt “shared that when you're sweating and don't have time to take a shower, you just take a baby wipe and rub it under your armpits.”

Too much information, folks.

Read This, Watch That:
Read: about Los Angeles-based music label Friends of Friends on Good magazine’s Web site (though the magazine is worth a read in and of itself, too). The label operates under the premise that people don't want to pay money for nothing, and digital music is sort of nothing, so how can it be made into a physical product? Solution: the label dropped an album in the form of a T-shirt emblazoned with the album art and a download card imbued with plant seeds pinned to the tag. Kudos for trying something new and keeping music interesting.

Watch: “Smile Pinki,” which won the Oscar for best short documentary and airs on HBO for the first time June 3. The film tells the true story of a desperately poor girl in India whose life changes after receiving surgery to repair her cleft lip. This is a rare opportunity to see the kind of art that so often goes unnoticed, since documentary shorts typically don’t get distribution in theaters.

Courtney Hazlett delivers the Scoop Monday through Friday on msnbc.com. Follow Scoop on Twitter: @ courtneyatmsnbc.

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