Mary Byrne is a 50 year old woman from Dublin who, before X-Factor, spent most of her time behind the checkouts at Tesco's, although it looks like she may also have spent quite a bit of time in front of them as well.

Since entering X-Factor she's been described as the new Susan Boyle, which is good news for us as she seems a little bit more, well, compos mentis than SuBo and has even been given her own stupid nickname of MaBy, so hopefully we'll be able to write about her without feeling that familiar twinge of guilt that we get from the SuBester.

Aside from comparisons to another dowdy woman with an equally surprising voice, there's not an enormous amount to say about Mary, she's pretty inoffensive and will probably do pretty well whatever the outcome of the show. Wonderful. She was voted out in the semi finals.