Simon Cowell said: "OK Susan, what's the dream?" "I'm trying to be a professional singer," replied Susan Boyle.
And with these words a then 47-year-old spinster stood in front of the judges of Britain's Got Talent and catapulted herself to global mega-stardom.
Actress and singer Elaine C Smith who plays Susan Boyle's life story before being joined on stage by the singing sensation for the finale
That life-changing moment is now transforming the career of Elaine C Smith, who was hand-picked by SuBo herself to play the unlikely star in I Dreamed A Dream – a musical about her life story.
And it would seem the role is one Elaine was fated to play.
While the rest of the world watched that audition on their TV, actresses Lynda Bellingham and Patricia Hodge were also glued to their screens mid-way through a performance of Calendar Girls.
Elaine says: "We were in the interval. They came out of the dressing rooms saying 'Oh, Elaine, there's this wee woman from Glasgow and she came out and looked terrible and then she sang and we were crying'.
"Sian Phillips was standing next to me, and she said 'Are you going into watch it?' And I said no, I'll end up playing her in a story of her life. I just said it as a gag."
It wasn't until Elaine was on holiday later that year that she was to realise how prophetic those words were.
"All of a sudden my BlackBerry started buzzing and all these journalists wanted to talk to me. I couldn't understand why but apparently Susan had been interviewed and when asked who she would like to play her in a film of her life she had said me... you know, rather than Demi Moore.
"I'd never met her or spoken to her but later on I found out that she had seen me on the Paul O'Grady show before I was about to do panto.
"I'd said then that I was playing the character as Susan Boyle but then everyone was doing her that year.
"I was incredibly flattered but I thought it was a Hollywood thing and that someone like Michelle Pfeiffer would end up doing it and win an Oscar for dressing down or something.
"I left it at that but later on Michael Harrison, the producer, got in touch with me and the idea for the stage show came about.
"I thought 'It's a Simon Cowell thing, it will be lawyered up to the hilt', but Michael pursued it and here we are."
In a further twist of fate, Elaine ended up doing the audio for Susan's biography after the shy singer was stuck in Los Angeles when the recording was due to take place. She also ended up writing the musical with Alan McHugh and director Ed Curtis.
She says: "We were brought up 20 miles away from each other, we're a similar age and have very similar family backgrounds. We even sang in a lot of the same clubs, although our lives took different paths.
"I met her and we had a cup of tea and she said she'd be honoured for me to play her."
The story starts with Susan born in Blackburn, Scotland, on April 1, 1961, the youngest child of a large Catholic family originally from Ireland.
Starved of oxygen at birth, she was bullied at school but early on found solace in singing.
It wasn't until she was well into adulthood that she plucked up the courage to perform in public, at open mic nights in a local pub.
"She didn't get to have a normal life," Elaine says. "Her father died before she was successful, then her sister died and then her mother."
And the audition, which Susan did in a gold dress and black tights and with unkempt hair, became a global phenomenon, with high-profile endorsement from the likes of Demi Moore, Oprah Winfrey and President Obama.
"We all love a fairy story," says Elaine. "There will never be another moment like that audition. For me, this was the tipping point in our obsession with being celebrities and looking a certain way. There was a belief that if you weren't tall, thin, blonde and gorgeous then forget it. Talent didn't come into it and there was a strand of the population that thought if you had the looks then you were guaranteed fame."
For Elaine, who started out as a singer before taking on the role of Mary Nesbitt in hit show Rab C Nesbitt, this is the first time she has played a real person and she has admitted she is finding the hype around the musical as magical as the original SuBo story.
There is an extra treat for fans, too, when the real Susan Boyle comes on stage to sing two songs, including I Dreamed A Dream.
