[1][2] In 2007, he won the first series of ITV's Britain's Got Talent with his performance of "Nessun dorma", an aria from Puccini's opera Turandot.

As a singer of operatic pop music, Potts recorded the album One Chance, which topped sales charts in 13 countries.

Potts was born on 13 October 1970[4] in Kingswood, Bristol, and raised in nearby Fishponds by his father Roland, a bus driver, and mother, Yvonne (née Higgins), a supermarket cashier.

Additionally, he sang with a small ensemble from the Royal Philharmonic in front of an audience of 15,000 and toured northern Italy as a soloist as part of his music classes there.

Potts defeated the bookmakers' co-favourite Connie Talbot, and received the highest percentage of two million votes cast to win £100,000.

On 3 December 2012, he was invited to celebrate 100 years of the Royal Variety Performance alongside Spelbound, Diversity and 2009 finalist Stavros Flatley.

Shortly before the Britain's Got Talent final in June 2007, the programme was criticised for representing Potts as a simple mobile-phone salesman, when he had appeared with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and had plans for a summer tour with it.

In December 2007, Prime Minister Gordon Brown presented Potts with a platinum disc for having sold 2,000,000 copies of his album.

[citation needed] On 13 December 2007, he performed in Leipzig in the live television broadcast of the 13th annual José Carreras Gala, accompanied by the Deutsches Filmorchester Babelsberg under the direction of Scott Lawton.

This included three outdoor classical music concerts with the Finnish violinist Linda Brava and the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra at Sofiero Palace, Sundbyholms Castle and Slottskogsvallen from 24 to 26 July.

On 15 August 2008, he performed before the German football season opening match between Bayern Munich and Hamburger SV in front of 69,000 visitors as well as on 2 September 2008 during the farewell game for Oliver Kahn.

In October 2008, Paul Potts sang in Japanese TV advertisements for Ryukakusan Direct throat medicine.

Potts was in Toronto on 10 November 2010 performing a "flash opera" at the Union Subway Station to a moderately-sized crowd and finished to loud applause.

Then in Hungary he played the role of Steuermann (Steersman) in Szeged Open Air Festivals' production of Richard Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer on 1 and 2 July.

In September 2017, Potts won the 320th episode of the South-Korean television music competition Immortal Songs: Singing the Legend, in a duet with Bae Da-hae [ko].

One Chance describes Potts’ difficult childhood, enduring passion for music, Britain's Got Talent win, and subsequent professional career.

One Chance was featured as a top film tie-in of the year by Publishers Weekly, where it was described as a "fascinating tale...of the shy Welsh (he was from Bristol) store manager who seized his dreams and won worldwide audiences.