Green Room

 Kim Pickering Jones 

Australia's Got Talent

KIM Pickering-Jones was so shy she once played a brick wall in a school play but now she’s hoping to be the next Susan Boyle.

The classically-trained singer received a resounding thumbs-up from Australia’s Got Talent judges when she appeared on the hit Channel 7 show on Tuesday night.

Dannii Minogue, Kyle Sandilands and Brian McFadden all voted “yes” to send the northern Sydney resident through to the next round, to air in a few weeks.

“My inspiration has always been Dame Joan Sutherland but Susan inspired me to enter the competition this year,” Pickering-Jones, 42, said. “I can only hope to be as successful as her and make a CD that sells as well.”

Pickering-Jones wowed the audience with a rendition of Summertime from George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.  And although she used to spend hours singing as a child, she didn’t start classical music lessons until she was 17. “I was about five when I started singing along with the radio.

“At school I was always the quietest person and very shy - I remember being in one Christmas pageant where I was a brick wall.”

Pickering-Jones lined up for the Sydney auditions of Talent in February, along with 200 people at Randwick Racecourse.

“I’ve never been confident before but it was because of Susan that I entered,” she said. “I enjoy singing so much but I’m finding the interviews a little bit harrowing, so I’m not sure how I’d cope with papparazzi.”

But she is already in demand at North Shore nursing homes and retirement villages with the SongBirds entertainment group.