Proud Mary has the real X Factor
Radiating confidence, she’s glowing and natural. The sort of girl anyone would love as their daughter. When I mention this, and say it’s no wonder the boys loved her, Mary says she can’t bear to look at the photo.
“I think my teeth are horrible,” she says.
That’s the thing about Mary. She talks of her low self esteem; of her nerves on stage, her mistakes, and the depression that still lingers, but in person, she spreads happiness. She’s gorgeous, and giving, and so grounded, it seems she’s never made a bad decision in her life.
Mary inspired millions when she appeared on the X Factor last year. She proved that you don’t have to be a teen idol to make it big, if your voice has the strength to inspire.
“I was a 50-year-old woman. I was not the pop star they were looking for. I didn’t dream I’d make it to the semi-finals.”
It’s been an extraordinary 18 months for Mary. She’s recorded two albums, published her book, and sung for Queen Elizabeth II. Yet she swears she is still dogged by that low self esteem.
“I spoke to Robbie Williams,” she mentions casually. “We were out having a cigarette. He’s a gorgeous man. What a gorgeous man! The television cameras don’t do him justice. To see him close, his eyes are piercing, and he has such a warm smile.
“When I met him I realised he is so like me. I remember saying, ‘I always watch you on stage, and I get the impression, although you are surrounded by adoring fans, there’s a loneliness.’ And he said, ‘That’s exactly how I felt about you, Mary. I saw that in you, and I felt bonded to you from the moment I saw you on stage.’ We talked about that. There are people clapping and screaming, and you are caught up in the moment. But as soon as the moment dies that emptiness is there. You don’t know why, but that low self esteem is still there.”
For all that, the whole X Factor experience has made Mary very happy. “I’ve discovered the dream I should have had for a long time.”
It’s all a far cry from Ballyfermot, and the poverty of her childhood. Mary adored her parents, but her mother didn’t handle money well. The pawn shop was part of life, and there were visits from the bailiffs.
Mary, though, was feisty from the start. When a man stopped his car, said he knew her mother, and offered her sweets and a lift up the town, she knew at once to say no.
“I remembered being told, ‘say no. And you keep backing away.’ That’s what I did. I knew not to get in that car. I just knew it.”
As a teenage boy magnet, she sensed boys only loved her for her big bust. She let them fondle her, from the outside only, but never, ever, let any of them pressurise her into going further. She kept her virginity until she fell in love for the first time at 17, when she Brian, the man she so nearly married.
Yet by then Mary had been out working for five years.
“I left school a month before my 13th birthday. I was just going into sixth class. The system was wrong for me. My mother was the biggest softie. If I said to her, ‘I’ll scrub the floors if you let me stay out of school,’ she would.
“When a school inspector called to the house, my mother would have said, ‘Oh Mary has gone to England. She needed a change of air, because she hasn’t been well.”
Mary worked in a local factory. But at 13, she wanted to become a nun.
“I went up to this convent in Ballyfermot. I remember this beautiful nun saying, ‘you need to go out and experience life, and see how things go’.”
At 20, three weeks before her wedding, she realised marrying Brian would be a mistake. Traumatised, she changed her life; she travelled, and on a whim went off to Israel to work in a Kibbutz. She was with Lorna, a gay friend, with whom she drifted into a relationship.
“I don’t regret that. Lorna is a lovely person, and that was a beautiful moment in my life. But we both knew it would never work. I’m not gay. And in the middle of being with her, I started to get over Brian and start to find men attractive again. I’ve no embarrassment about that episode whatsoever.”
And even though her big love affair with the enigmatic Robbie did not work out, she can’t regret it, because the relationship produced her adored daughter, Deborah. She was born in 1987, and although Mary found the first couple of years as a single mum challenging, there’s no doubting her love for her. Mary mentions her constantly.
All this time, though, Mary kept that dream of becoming a nun.
“Six years ago, I was in Galway with a friend, and we went into that big abbey there. I remember walking in and that wonderful feeling came over me again. Seeing all those nuns; they were French nuns and they had pupils there. I remember saying to my friend, ‘If I’m not a nun by the time I’m fifty, I’ll be doing something very big.
“And lo and behold! Singing replaced it. I know now, this is what God meant for me. It was something in the public, entertaining and helping people.”
If I’d been a nun, I would not have been stuck in a monastery. I would have been out, walking with people, doing what I could.”
Life hasn’t always been easy for Mary. Her mother descended into Alzheimer’s; and before her death, her father was badly injured, run over by a stolen car. Staunchly loyal, Mary helped when she could, to relieve her brother, Willie, who became their main carer.
Their death hit her hard. Depression took over, and has never quite left. She’s still on antidepressants, but that’s not so surprising, when she had to watch her adored brother-in-law, Liam, die from cancer, just a month ago.
Has the dream of the last year felt as good as Mary expected? “Yeah — and no,” she says. “Yeah in that I have two albums out there. And the book is out. Telling my story to Eddie Rowley was unbelievably therapeutic. And my daughter is going to be looked after and stuff. And she’s met her idols Westlife! No, because I can’t hop on the 79 bus and go into Penneys with Deborah.”
The future looks bright.
“I’m back into Grease in January, in Scotland, Belfast and Derry. I’m in talks about the West End musical, Chicago, and there’s talk of a tour with Phil Coulter.”
Mary has, well and truly, left the tills of Tesco behind. But she’s still in the same house in Ballyfermot.
“The people there know me so well. They know me from Tesco’s. They know me from singing in the pubs. Now I’ve put Ballyfermot on the map they are so proud. They look out for me, and give me all the encouragement.”
The minute we finish the interview a man shakes her hand, and showers her with compliments. Mary glows. But some time in the day, she tells me, she will have a down moment. “I’ll be melancholy, thinking about my mother. Thinking about Liam’s death. Everything comes into you. And there’s still that low self-esteem.”
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