AND LO, four stars were born. Little Mix last night became the first girl group to win The X Factor.
As well as achieving overnight celebrity, the four-woman band has won a recording contract, although the value of the deal is reportedly more in the region of £150,000 (€175,000) than the rumoured £1 million.
They will also likely achieve a Christmas No 1, especially in the Irish charts, where X Factorwinners have monopolised the festive top spot since 2006. In Britain, that pattern was disrupted in 2009 when Joe McElderry was elbowed from the top of the charts by the re-release of a Rage Against The Machine anthem.
A similar, Facebook-led campaign to keep The X Factorfrom the UK No 1 is in full swing again this year, and could see Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirittrump Little Mix. Other likely contenders for the top the charts at Christmas are the Military Wives, whose charity single stormed the Amazon charts before its release.
It is difficult to single out highlights of this weekend’s final. Props included a jumbo jet and a fleet of motorbikes. We had male dancers in police uniform and boy bands in abundance.
A welcome mellow moment came when Gary Barlow and runner-up Marcus Collins sang a duet of She's Always a Woman to Me. Gazza looked stately behind a grand piano until a camera swung around, revealing his fingers to be strangely inactive, given the cascading notes we were hearing.
Few X Factorwinners have gone on to enduring success. Leona Lewis and Alexandra Burke are the exceptions, but a string of male winners have been dropped by SyCo – the entertainment giant co-owned by Simon Cowell and Sony – after their debuts bombed.
Ireland has never had a winner, despite some near misses, including this year’s Janet Devlin, who reached the top five.
Eoghan Quigg got to the finals in 2008, while Dubliner Mary Byrne reached last year’s semifinals.