Mary Byrne is not a pop star. She's not a fake. She's just a woman who worked at the checkout counter of a Tesco supermarket and had a dream – and it's far from over, writes RÓISÍN INGLE
WOMEN THROW themselves at Mary Byrne. They launch themselves at her on the streets, declaring undying admiration. They say they relate to her life and are inspired by the way she followed her dream. It doesn’t happen in Ballyfermot, where locals are used to seeing their famous neighbour out and about, but it happens on Grafton Street, according to the nice woman from Byrne’s record company during an enthusiastic pre-interview briefing.
“There is something about Mary that women just really relate to,” she says in the lobby of a city-centre hotel where, outside, photographers are snapping Joe Elliott from Def Leppard. “One woman, a posh lady, threw herself at Mary on the street today and said her daughter was going through a marriage breakup. She told her daughter to take a leaf out of Mary’s book and be whoever she wanted be.”
Later she enthuses: “I guarantee you will feel an affinity with Mary because everyone does . . . she has this incredible ability to meet people at their level.” Apparently, what Byrne has “you cannot buy, you cannot teach and in the truest sense of the word she has the X factor”.
I was feeling quite well-disposed towards Byrne before this Ode to Mary but now I fear I've stepped into a scene from Peter Kay's hilarious reality TV spoof Britain's Got the Pop Factor. . . and Possibly a New Celebrity Jesus Christ Soapstar Superstar Strictly on Ice. So it's a relief meeting 51-year-old Byrne who, despite being one of the more successful graduates of the latest X Factorseries, seems unchanged from the heart-on-her-sleeve heroine we watched week after week belting out tunes such as I Who Have Nothingand dissolving into tears when the homesickness or arthritis got too much.
We meet on the day newspapers are reporting that Joe McElderry – who won X Factorin 2009 – has been dropped by his record label. "Ah, poor Joe," says Byrne, who came fifth in the last series and is well aware of the fickle nature of the industry in which she is currently thriving. Her album Mine and Yours, under Andew Lloyd Webber's producer Nigel Wright, reached a respectable number six in the UK charts and spent two weeks at the number one spot at home, where it went double platinum, selling almost 30,000. In June of this year Byrne will play support to Neil Diamond. "I can't believe it," she says, seeming genuinely amazed by this turn of events.
Born and raised in Ballyfermot, Byrne left school at 12 to work in Belinda’s Plastic Pants factory, where she made frilly plastic covers for nappies. There was always music in the house. Her mother doing Vera Lynn, her dad singing country, uncles and brothers turning the house into post-pub cabaret spot. Byrne herself would sing, face turned from the friendly crowd, never quite knowing how to handle compliments about her voice. She did talent contests, the house slowly filling up with trophies, and listened to – but never took seriously – other people’s assertions that she had the talent to make it all the way.
She had a “very happy” childhood, she says, playing down visits to the pawn shop and the time they were nearly evicted because her mother – “she was terrible with money, God rest her” – hadn’t kept up payments to the corporation. “I remember the bailiffs outside the house and us all packed up and the Worker’s Party TD Thomas MacGiolla telling them they had the wrong address, which saved us in the end,” she says.
She was an independent young woman. When a long-term relationship broke up she went off with a friend to a kibbutz in Israel, followed by a trip backpacking across Europe. When she came home, she met the big love of her life and father of her only daughter Deborah. “I was madly in love with him. When I got pregnant he didn’t want to know and he offered me money for an abortion. I slapped his face and told him to drop dead, but I still loved him,” she says.
Although she never named him, her heartbreak over this man as she struggled to bring up her daughter alone was a crucial part of her X Factor"journey". Recently, the man sold his story to newspapers. "That was the bucket of water over my head which finally made me realise I felt feck-all for the fella," she says.
Her heart was broken for a long time. This sadness, coupled with the guilt she felt about her daughter growing up without a father, meant she did little but work to support Deborah.
“I felt guilty that I had given her the wrong start in life . . . I didn’t want her to suffer for my mistake,” she says. She took a part-time job in Tesco, any thoughts of a singing career or even singing for pleasure long gone.
From time to time people would try to encourage her to use her talents but “I just didn’t hear what other people heard”.
She was 28 when she auditioned for Opportunity Knocks, finally giving in to entreaties from friends. Her nerves and lack of self-belief got the better of her that time. "I just didn't think I had it and I didn't know why people wanted me to sing," she says. "It didn't register that this was something I could use in my life. So I stood there singing at the audition with my eyes closed and I was all over the place, I stopped singing for a long time then."
It was only as she reached her mid-forties that her brother Tommo finally persuaded her to pick up a microphone again. She started locally with karaoke and cabaret. Gradually, her confidence increased. She entered and won talent contest Nollaig Number 1on TG4. "Something clicked in me after that," she says, emotional now as she talks about a genuinely transformative moment in her life.
“It was like the woman I was inside, the woman I should have been a long time ago, could emerge. I had buried her so deep, too self-conscious to let her out, and I don’t know why but I never felt I was worthy of anything. I still had the nerves, and they never went, but somehow I just sort of suddenly knew I was okay and quite lovely inside.”
What could be an awkward Oprahmoment is moving and authentic. As is her honesty about the anti-depressants she began taking three years ago when a combination of the menopause and thyroid problems resulted in depression.
She was crying all the time, missing her parents, and after talking to her doctor decided to try a mild course of the tablets. "I haven't looked back and I will stay on them as long as they keep me feeling like the woman I am," she says. She loved her X Factorexperience. She says Simon Cowell has an "aura" but is – which won't be a shock to most of us – "annoyingly arrogant".
“I told him that to his face,” she laughs. Louis Walsh, she says, has championed her from the start and has told her that, whatever happens, he will support her career. “He understands me and I think I understand him,” she says. She didn’t, as was reported, have a fling with Wagner. “I am definitely not his type,” she laughs. So far with her earnings she has bought a bag and a couple of pairs of shoes. “My priorities are that I want to buy my house in Ballyfermot and get a new kitchen,” she says.
I bring Joe McElderry up again. “Look,” she says. “I know it’s not going to last forever. If they drop me next week I am prepared for it. I don’t think I will ever be out of work in Ireland in terms of the music business but I have big ambitions. I want to be doing the O2, making good albums and writing my own songs.”
It shocks her that some women see her as an inspiration. "The only reason I can think of is that I have nothing to hide," she says. "When I was on X Factorall dressed up feeling so good about myself I always hoped big women would look at me and say, 'She looks okay' . . . I know I need to lose weight for my health but it will never be for vanity reasons or for somebody else."
Will a job in Tesco ever be an option again? “I am never going back,” she says. “I miss the banter but I have been given a lifeline to get out of all the ruts I’ve been in and I am going to keep going. To anybody who has been hurt in life, I say get up off your backside and follow your dreams.”
And then she is off. A charity gig tonight. The G.A.Y club in London the following evening. Then some gigs in the UK before the big Neil Diamond concert in June, news of which, she says, made fellow X Factorcontestant Katie Waissel "mad jealous".
Outside the hotel I watch as Byrne gets into a taxi and is ambushed by hugs from three septuagenarian friends on an annual reunion. I can almost hear the nice woman from the record company saying, “See? I told you so!”
“She is not a pop star,” says one of the huggers, Patricia O’Byrne, explaining the appeal of the Ballyfermot woman as she is driven away. “She is not slim and trim and flaunting herself. She is basically a truly honest woman, happy with the way she is, belting out that wonderful voice and we are all thinking, ‘good on you’.” It turns out there really is something about Mary.
Mary Byrne's album Mine and Yoursis out now. She will appear as the guest of Neil Diamond at the Aviva stadium on June 25th
