The schoolboy street dancer had audition for the first series, but didn't make it through to the semi-finals. These days, Potts has a successful singing career touring the world, and last year starred in two full-length operas, playing Cavaradossi in Puccini's Tosca at Summer Sessions at Chiswick House and Steuermann in a production of Wagner's Der Fliegende Holländer. A single from the soundtrack was nominated for a Golden Globes, but ironically it was by Taylor Swift rather than Potts. In 2013, his life was made into a film starring James Corden. His three following albums were less successful, but thanks to several lucrative advertising deals, and appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show and singing at football matches, by 2009 Potts was rumoured to have amassed a £5 million fortune.
Potts released an album, One Chance, that reached number one in nine countries and went platinum in the UK. He reprised Nessun Dorma, which he had sung in his first audition, and then again for good measure after winning. Potts overwhelmed both judges and audience with a sweep of superb performances that gave opera's popular profile a boost after years of football matches and Cornetto adverts. The then 37-year-old winner of the first series of Britain's Got Talent had a backstory that The X Factor would have killed for: a keen amateur opera singer, Potts kept his dramatic light hidden under a bushel, working quietly as a Carphone Warehouse manager.
