Paul Potts is a British tenor who in 2007 became the winner of the first series of ITV's Britain's Got Talent, singing an operatic aria, "Nessun Dorma" from Turandot. Potts had appeared in amateur opera productions from 1999 to 2003.

Potts was raised in Fishponds, Bristol, by his father Roland, a bus driver, and mother, Yvonne, a supermarket cashier. He attended St. Mary Redcliffe School, where he developed his love of singing. He also sang with the choir at Chester Park Junior School and with the choirs at several Bristol churches, including Christ Church.

In the interview that was broadcast before his performance in the semifinal, Potts said that he had been bullied in school, and that experience may have had an influence on his lack of self-confidence. He made a similar remark in 1999 — that his voice had always been a source of solace in the past when bullied.

Potts was on a six-month sabbatical as manager at Carphone Warehouse in Bridgend, a mobile phone store some eight miles from his hometown. On 5 March, 2008, he resigned from his management position via email.

He earned an Honours degree in 1993 from University College Plymouth St Mark & St John, majoring in Humanities, and was a Liberal Democrat councillor in Bristol from 1996 to 2003.

Potts first sang opera in 1999 in a karaoke competition, dressed as Luciano Pavarotti That same year he appeared in the Michael Barrymore talent show My Kind of Music. Although he did not take first place, he won £8,000 — enough to help pay for vocal lessons in Italy, during which he was selected to perform in front of singers Pavarotti and Katia Ricciarelli. He did not however, as was claimed at the time by newspapers such as The Daily Mail and The Sun, receive tuition from Pavarotti.

For the Bath Opera of Bath, Somerset, an amateur company, he performed leading roles on four occasions, after beginning in 1999 in the minor roles of The Prince of Persia and the Herald in Puccini's Turandot: Don Basilio in Mozart's Marriage of Figaro in 2000; Don Carlos in Verdi's Don Carlos in 2001; Don Ottavio in Mozart's Don Giovanni in 2003; and Radames in Verdi's Aida in 2003. He also performed the role of the Chevalier des Grieux in Puccini's Manon Lescaut for the Southgate Opera Company in London, an amateur company, in May 2003. 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.

In several interviews, Potts revealed that he performed Aida despite doctors' wishes to remove an adrenal tumor they had discovered during his illness from a burst appendix, and performed Manon Lescaut shortly after the surgery to remove it. Potts broke his collarbone and suffered whiplash in a bicycle accident in 2003, which prevented him from pursuing opera as a career or as a vocation. The mishap and financial difficulties that followed led him to enter Britain's Got Talent despite not having sung for four years.

On 9 June 2007, Potts' audition for Simon Cowell's new search-for-a-star show Britain's Got Talent was televised on ITV1 in the UK. The audition was held at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff on 17 March 2007. Potts sang Giacomo Puccini's "Nessun Dorma," for which he received a standing ovation from the audience of 2,000 people. In the semi-final on 14 June 2007, Potts performed the main verses of "Con te partirò" ("Time to Say Goodbye"). He progressed to the final after receiving the highest public vote in that show. He performed "Nessun Dorma" for his finale on 17 June 2007, as well as an encore after he won the competition. Potts defeated co-favourite with the bookmakers, Connie Talbot, and received the highest percentage of two million votes cast to win Britain's Got Talent, and the chance to perform at the Royal Variety Performance on 3 December 2007, in front of Queen Elizabeth.

In the United States, he was profiled on a National Public Radio programme called "Day to Day" on 15 June 2007. On 18 June 2007, a commercial US Television network, NBC, highlighted Potts' victory on its broadcast network's NBC Nightly News and on its Cable news outlet MSNBC. Then on 21 June 2007 he appeared live on NBC's programme Today.

On 8 July 2007, Potts performed at a Katherine Jenkins' concert at Margam Park, "Katherine In The Park". Jenkins extended an invitation for him to sing his rendition of "Nessun Dorma" at the concert. On 16 July 2007, his debut album One Chancewas released in UK, and on 22 July 2007, the album claimed the number one spot in the UK Album Chart. On 6 November 2007, Potts appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show to perform on a show whose topic was YouTube. On 24 November 2007, Potts was interviewed on the National Public Radio programme Weekend Edition Saturday.

In December 2007, Prime Minister Gordon Brown presented Potts with a discography plaque for having sold 2,000,000 copies of his album One Chanceand for showing that "Britain really does have huge amounts of talent."

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. On 17 January, 2008, exactly seven months to the day after winning Britain's Got Talent, he began his 2008 Concert Series at the Pavilion Theatre in Rhyl, Wales, which covered 97 tour concerts in 85 cities across 23 countries and ended on 12th November 2008. Potts performed at three outdoor classical music concerts in Swedish castles with the Finnish violinist Linda Lampenius and the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. The concerts took place on 24 July at Sofiero Palace in Helsingborg, on 25 July at Sundbyholms Castle in Eskilstuna and at Slottskogsvallen in Göteborg on 26 July.