Chart-Topper Susan Boyle needs someone 24 hours a day to end her loneliness, her concerned family believe.
The 48-year-old singing sensation, who looked after her mother until she died in 2007, feels particularly alone late at night, her brothers have revealed.
Her eldest brother John said last night his sister should have someone with her round the clock to help her cope with the pressures of her meteoric rise to fame.
And her other brother Gerry, 55, from Musselburgh, East Lothian, described her current lifestyle as “exhausting”.
Susan’s meteroric rise to fame has seen her become a household name in less than a year since her audition for Britain’s Got Talent.
She is currently Britain’s most successful pop star. But recent breakdowns in public have worried her fans and family.
John said: “She needs 24-hour care. She needs to be looked after.”
Speaking to US magazine People, Gerry added: “The travelling and the whole (fame) thing is exhausting. She still has her anxieties and her loneliness.”
Susan makes late-night phone calls – and on occasion visits – to her close family and friends when she is feeling lonely.
She does not even have the comfort of her cat, Pebbles, who has been boarded out because of Susan’s hectic new lifestyle.
One close friend, Lorraine Campbell, said: “She knows she can come up to me any time. If she’s upset, she’ll stay the night.
“Security bring her up to my house. I take her home in the morning. Susan stayed with me a week ago. Night-time is a lonely time for her.”
Businessman Gerry believes Susan, who pours out her heart to him in late-night phone calls, will not be truly happy until she has found a real soulmate.
He said: “Her biggest wish is to find someone who she can share her success with and support her through the difficult times.
“Susan has the world at her feet in terms of fame and money but at this precise moment in time it means nothing.
“The one thing she wants above all everything else is love. Who doesn’t?”
Since finding fame last spring, Susan has suffered a series of health problems.
Following the final of Britain’s Got Talent last May, she went into the Priory clinic suffering from exhaustion.
Last week, she collapsed at Heathrow Airport.
Last month, an intruder was also found in her house in Blackburn, West Lothian, prompting the hiring of a 24-hour security team.
Sharon Osbourne apologises to Susan Boyle
Former X Factor judge Sharon Osbourne has issued an apology to Susan Boyle for using derogatory and abusive words for her in a TV interview. In an interview with Star magazine Osbourne said:
“I didn’t want to hurt her, why would I ever want to hurt her? I was on a rock ’n’ roll radio show with a load of guys and they all started making jokes about her, so what do you do? I joined in!
“I had a laugh at her expense – a cheap laugh, and I shouldn’t have. I got busted, but I’ve got to own it.”