Paul Potts: 'One Chance'

Has there even been a star as unlikely as Paul Potts? With his burly frame, Hollywood-defying smile and proudly everyday name, he makes John Prescott seem like a matinee idol. If you spotted him outside your front window, you wouldn’t think, ‘Ah, there goes a man who’s just signed a six-figure record deal!’ You’d just be relieved that the gas man had finally turned up to read the meter. But, thanks to the wonders of reality TV, the former mobile phone salesman from Port Talbot has been handed a chance - One Chance, as his debut LP knowingly puts it - at stardom.

It’s been less than a month since Potts won Britain’s Got Talent in front of 13 million viewers, but, thanks to the boundless, awe-inspiring commercial savvy of Simon Cowell, his album is already on the shelves. Unsurprisingly, it’s probably the least creatively inspired release of the year. Its tracklisting is designed to appeal to mums pushing their trolleys around Tesco's – there’s an Italian-language opera version of ‘Everybody Hurts’, a cover of Il Divo’s cover of ‘You Raise Me Up’, and a Granny-pleasing trundle through Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Music Of The Night’. Naturally, ‘Nessun Dorma’, the Puccini tearjearker that gave Potts the vehicle to beat a gap-toothed six-year-old warbler and a stage school brat who dressed up Mary Poppins to win the ITV talent hunt, opens the album. In fact, the only surprise is that ‘Unchained Melody’ – a favourite of Cowell-endorsed reality TV stars since the days of Gareth Gates - has been omitted.

One Chance’s arrangements, of course, are uniformly tasteful and unambitious. The London Symphony Orchestra brings a bit of sweeping melodrama – and a much-needed injection of classical gravitas – to six songs, but there’s nothing here to break the sense of tasteful calm. It’s a minor miracle that the album’s clutch of producers, whose most notable member is Westlife and Britney Spears hitmaker Per Magnusson, managed to knock out something so scrubbed and manicured in such a small space of time. Poor old Per. The temptation to knock out a few rabble-rousing bars of 'If I Let You Go' or '(You Drive Me) Crazy' between takes must have been incredible, but every time he'd have to steel himself. No! There's work to be done! Simon could drop in any second!

The album’s saving grace is Potts himself. He doesn’t quite manage to revitalise these classical crossover warhorses – his version of ‘Time To Say Goodbye’ is far less affecting than Sarah Brightman’s, and his rendition of ‘Music of the Night’ lacks the West End pizzazz that Michael Ball brought to it – but his relatively untrained tenor is earthy and unostentatious. His success might not prove conclusively that Britain’s Got Talent, but it does suggest that Britain – or, more accurately, the British TV-viewing public – has got plenty of heart.