Sage Advice

Advice compiled and condensed from actual sources by Kelly Jane Torrance, who composed the questions.

More than 35 million people have watched me perform a song from “Les Miserables” on YouTube. I’m completely gobsmacked.

The clip was from my spot on “Britain’s Got Talent.” I certainly thought I had some, but when I got onstage, the audience laughed, assuming an unmarried, unkissed frump wouldn’t. I proved them wrong!

Now that I’ve surprised everyone, though, I wonder if I should change my image. Is a makeover in order? Hollywood and Broadway await.

- Susan Boyle

Dear Susan,

Why not be oneself? That is the whole secret of a successful appearance. If one is a greyhound, why try to look like a Pekingese?

- Dame Edith Sitwell

I cut my mom out of my life, but I don’t comment publicly on why. It’s a private matter - even for someone who has a reality show and writes best-selling memoirs. She, on the other hand, has mounted a public campaign to talk about it. She wrote me an open letter on her Web site. Worse, she went on “Larry King Live” to complain - and basically accused me of killing my dad, Aaron, by breaking his heart! Am I wrong to keep her out of my life? I have two kids of my own now, and it might be good for them to know their grandmother.

- Tori Spelling

Dear Tori,

Mothers are all slightly insane.

- J.D. Salinger

I need some tips on damage control. I had a messy divorce that drove me crazy. I put myself through hell in the wrestling ring to support my family. Then she left me, and I had to watch a 19-year-old drive the Escalade I bought my 48-year-old wife and think about him having sex with her in the home I paid for. At least when I cheated with our daughter’s friend, the girl wasn’t that young.

It made me so mad that, as I told a magazine, I could understand how O.J. felt. I felt like turning the place into a crime scene. Everyone is freaking out, as if I would actually do that. Isn’t it natural to want to hurt the people who have hurt you?

- Hulk Hogan

Dear Hulk,

If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.

-Theodore Roosevelt